The following was printed on Tina (Richards) Smith's HOF plaque:
Tina Richards came to Siena Heights University as a soft-spoken distance runner from the small Northern Michigan town of East Jordan in 1994. Four years later, she graduated from Siena Heights University as a soft-spoken student-athlete who set fourteen team and individual running records as a member of the Saints’ cross country and track and field teams.
Richards paced the Saints’ cross country team from 1994-97, and that pace got quicker every year. As a senior in ’97, Richards earned NAIA All-American honors with a 4th-place finish at the NAIA Cross Country National Championships. Richards’ finish was the best ever for a SHU runner and she led the Saints to their best team finish (11th place) in the program’s history.
Richards earned NAIA track and field All-American honors five times during her four-year career as a middle-distance/relay runner. She ran on the Saints’ 4 X 400 and two-mile relay teams (both indoor and outdoor) which set school records and garnered All-America recognition.
In the sixteen WHAC conference meets she competed in while at Siena Heights, Richards was named the Most Valuable Runner seven times.
