Hendrix College Athletics

At 5'4", Tori Huggins says she entered Hendrix College as "a small girl with big dreams." The Clinton Arkansas, native had a deep desire to play college basketball, and walked away from other schools' scholarship offers to play for the love of the game while getting a Hendrix education.

"If I'm honest, Hendrix seemed to pick me," she says. "I felt like God was telling me Hendrix was where I would make a difference and where I would start my young adult life."

Huggins majored in Theater and minored in Kinesiology, and found that her academic life actually flourished because she played basketball all four years and softball for three years. Her schedule simply left no room for procrastination. On the court, she broke Hendrix records and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference career points record. After graduation, she played for a year with the Arkansas Stars semi-pro basketball team, earning All-Conference honors in the process. 

Huggins is thankful that Hendrix cultivates individuals to change the world, because her career after basketball took a surprising turn. She tried pipe welding for what she thought would be a few months, discovered she loved the work, and excelled at it, winning the Tri-States welding competition in all three years of her apprenticeship. She has served as director of the Arkansas State Pipe Trades, running three accelerated welding programs across Arkansas and teaching at one of them. She is grateful that her role as an instructor provided opportunities to help struggling young people find a stable career. Huggins has now been a nuclear pipe welder for nine years, and a Certified Welding Inspector for four years.