Around the State: Pinsons receive Landry Award from DBU; Lady Bears national champs

The Daraja Children’s Choir recently led worship during a University of Mary Hardin-Baylor chapel service. The ministry has brought hundreds of children from Uganda and Kenya to tour the United States and lead worship since 2007, bridging cultures and discipling young leaders.

Bill and Bobbie Pinson received the Tom Landry Leadership Award from Dallas Baptist University. He is executive director emeritus of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, distinguished university professor at DBU and volunteer director of the Texas Baptist Heritage Center. She has served 18 years on the DBU board of trustees. The Pinsons are members of First Baptist Church in Lancaster.

Baylor University’s Lady Bears women’s basketball team won the NCAA national championship. In spite of an injury that forced junior Lauren Cox, the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, from the game, the Lady Bears defeated Notre Dame 82-81. The national championship is the third in Baylor women’s basketball history, all under the leadership of Coach Kim Mulkey.

The Wayland Baptist University Flying Queens women’s basketball program will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame at a Sept. 5-7 ceremony in Springfield, Mass. The hall of fame’s direct-elect committee recognized the program from 1948 to 1982, when the Queens were instrumental in affecting changes made to women’s basketball—using community sponsors, offering athletic scholarships for women decades before Title IX, and changing the game to the full-court, 5-on-5 with unlimited dribble. The Queens hold the record for the longest winning streak in basketball at 131 games, accomplished from 1953 to 1958. The team earned 10 AAU national titles, national runner-up finishes, nine consecutive NWIT titles and success throughout the decades that has led to more than 1,600 wins—more than any team in history.

Howard Payne University’s Criminal Justice Club and Amigos Unidos Club will collect new and gently used items for the Heart of Texas Children’s Advocacy Center in Early. The organizations particularly request blankets, backpacks, stuffed animals and hygiene products. The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., April 13, in the parking lot of Abundant Life Church on West Commerce in Brownwood. For more information, email Danny Brunette-López at dbrunette@hputx.edu.

Buckner Retirement Services marked the expansion and renovation of Buckner Calder Woods in Beaumont with an April 2 ribbon-cutting ceremony. The project involved an 80,000–square-foot expansion and 51,000-square-foot renovation, resulting in the addition of 67 residences and 24 skilled-nursing rooms. It also included the renovation of all independent-living common areas and construction of a wellness center with an indoor pool, gym, activity space and bistro.