Rhodes Athletic Hall of Fame
As a student track standout, member of Omicron Delta Kappa, alumni association president and volunteer coach, Freeman Marr has never stopped running for his alma mater. A star on the 1946 and 1947 track teams, his coach was John Osman, Southwestern professor of philosophy, who exemplified the scholar-athlete. He competed on the 1947 Lynx mile relay team that set a Tennessee state collegiate record and was ranked the seventh best time in the nation.
In 1956, Freeman returned to campus to serve as the head men’s track coach on a strictly volunteer basis. From then through 1967 he gave countless hours to athletes at practice and at meets, coaching teams that won an outstanding fifty-two meets in his eleven years as Lynx track coach. Though he officially retired as head coach in 1967, he continued to work with the men’s track team as an assistant coach on a regular basis. And it was Freeman who in 1978 started Southwestern At Memphis’ first women’s track team, affectionately known at the time as “SAM’s Angels.”
Freeman began competing in national and world-wide masters’ track events in 1968. In fifteen years he won more than twenty-five national age-group titles including the Canadian Indoor Championships and the North American Championships in Mexico City. In 1980, at the United States Track and Field Indoor Championships in Lincoln, Nebraska, he set a national record in the pentathlon. Past president of the Tennessee Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, he was also named to the U.S. Track and Field Federation as an All American in the high hurdles, triple jump and long jump.
It is fitting indeed that Freeman’s accomplishments live on at Rhodes in the award established in his name. The Freeman C. Marr Award is presented annually to the outstanding track and field athlete who best embodies dedication to the principles of scholarship and athletics.
In recognition of his own commitment to these principles and to his contributions to this College as athlete and coach, Rhodes is honored to induct FREEMAN C. MARR into the Athletic Hall of Fame this 17th day of October, 1997.
