OKLAHOMA CITY – On May 2, tennis champion and Cherokee Nation citizen Vance McSpadden and other Native athletes were inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.
The ceremony took place at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City and featured an exhibit of the inductees’ memorabilia.
“It was unreal,” McSpadden said. “I thought, ‘What am I doing up there?’ There’s probably a lot of people that deserved it more than I did, but I accepted it anyway. I’m very proud and honored to be Native American.”
Born in 1944, McSpadden was raised in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he graduated from Muskogee High School. There he won a state championship in doubles as a junior and was a singles state semi-finalist as a senior…