Inductees

Walk by the indoor swimming pool at College of the Ozarks, and it may seem like just another athletic facility. In reality, it’s steeped in history – as the place where Dora Quinn Arney Meikle began to make her mark as a pioneer of women’s athletics.

“Women athletes today maybe wouldn’t realize all we went through,” Meikle said. “It wasn’t easy to get started.”

Then again, it’s not how you start but how you finish, and Meikle certainly finished with an impressive legacy that covered three decades at the Point Lookout school. In essence, she championed women’s sports and helped fuel the rise of the Title IX era before retiring in 1994. Now she is knocking on another door, to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, which is proud to induct Meikle in the Class of 2016.

A 1946 graduate of Greenwood Laboratory School and 1950 graduate of then-Southwest Missouri State Teachers College, Meikle taught physical education for 41 years in Missouri high schools and colleges. But she made her mark at C of O.

Meikle taught and coached there from 1965 to 1994 and created the women’s athletic program. She spent 14 years as intramurals director and 19 years as the director of the aquatics program. Along the way, she launched the intercollegiate swimming, track and cross country programs in the late 1960s and, under her leadership, C of O hosted the first state collegiate swim meet in 1967 and the second state collegiate track meet in 1969.

In championing Title IX, Meikle served as a national delegate of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), the main national organization for women’s sports before they moved under the umbrella of the NCAA. Her tireless work also led to the formation of the Missouri chapter of the AIAW, and she was active in its leadership as well as that of the American Alliance of Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) and its Missouri chapter, plus the National Aquatics Committee. For decades, she held officer roles of each organization and eventually, through AAHPERD, was one of 15 U.S. sports delegates to Russia in 1993.

Her work paved the way for C of O’s women’s basketball program, one of the most successful in NAIA Division II.

Among her influences were three key members of Missouri State University who brought women’s athletics to the forefront: Dr. Mary Jo Wynn, Linda Dollar and Reba Sims. All are Missouri Sports Hall of Famers, with Wynn a Missouri Sports Legend.

“After all I went through with the men and getting sports started, they ended up being my best friends,” Meikle said.

In the 1940s, when she lived on a farm east of Springfield, her brothers George, James and Robert played high school sports. However, high school sports weren’t offered to girls, and yet Meikle sensed she had athleticism. She often out-ran other boys.

“The girls didn’t have anything (such as teams),” Meikle said. “That’s when I got my competitive streak.”

After college, she taught physical education from 1950 to 1963 (in St. Charles, Greenwood Laboratory School, Camdenton, Bartow, Mountain Grove, Park Hill) as well as collegiately at Lindenwood and Missouri-Kansas City.

When she reached C of O, Meikle expanded her passion for athletics.

In those early years at College of the Ozarks, girls track and field athletes were allowed only 20 minutes on the track and also had to find their own shoes and other equipment. “The school didn’t have a lot of money,” Meikle said. “We had old yellow school buses (for athletics trips), and we had to push them out of the gate.”

Yet Meikle kept pushing for equality. Her strongest argument was for the overall health of athletics in southwest Missouri. “The men were going out and getting (P.E.) and coaching jobs,” Meikle said. “We needed to get women out there in the area coaching, because it helps the high schools.”

Overall, it was a positive environment, too, for her sons, David and Rex Arney. The family lived on campus, where Dora also taught art.

Among her awards are the Teaching Excellence Award from C of O, the American Red Cross First Aid Water Safety 40-year Award, Who’s Who in American Education and the Taney County Retired Teacher of the Year. She also is in the Red Cross Hall of Fame.

“I still keep in contact with some of the athletes,” Meikle said. “Some were like my own children.”