BARTLESVILLE ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME PREVIEW: MIKE EPPERSON AND NOAH HARTSOCK
By Mike Tupa
Sept. 30, 2025
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
It's been 17 years since the Bartlesville Sports Commission — newly formed in 2007 — pulled up the curtain on a new institution called the Bartlesville Athletic Hall of Fame (BaHOF). The first induction ceremony took place in 2008 and — with the exception of the COVID challenges in 2020 — has become a prized annual event on the Bartlesville social calendar.
This year’s induction celebration is set for Friday at the Bartlesville Community Center.
Three individuals and a team are part of the BaHOF’s Class of 2025 — the 17th edition of honorees. The individuals include Mike Epperson, Noah Hartsock and Gerald Thompson and the 1969 Bartlesville American Legion Doenges Ford Indians will be enshrined as a team.
This will bring the number up to approximately 70 individual inductees and 20 teams/organizations.
Following is a closer look at two of this year’s honorees. The other two will be highlighted in a later article.
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MIKE EPPERSON
For 16 years Mike Epperson could hardly keep his feet on the ground.
The Bartlesville native was a composite — a bundle of energy harnessed by discipline and focus, and fueled by a frequent flier mentality that helped propel him to the heights of collegiate gymnastic greatness.
Approximately 36 years have passed since Epperson last spit in the face of gravity while displaying a powerful grace that whipped his compact frame (5-foot-5, 135 pounds) through the air.
The spotlight will fall on Epperson again when he steps up to accept his induction into the Bartlesville Athletic Hall of Fame, set for Friday at the Bartlesville Community Center.
Fittingly, this is the same site where Epperson used to push himself beyond the limit — with the help of his Phillips 66 Gymnastics Club coach Dave Strobel — at the old Garfield High School building, torn down to make room for the community center.
Looking on proudly while Epperson is officially canonized as a true Bartlesville sports legend will be his mother and other loved ones and friends. His father — who passed away while Epperson was still attending the University of Nebraska — will likely be there in spirit.
This was an honor Epperson didn’t expect.
“I was so humbled,” he said. “I knew I was a pretty good gymnast but being in the Hall of Fame was something I never thought of or dreamed up. This is a great honor.”
Gymnastics became a part of Epperson’s life at age six, back when the Phillips 66 Gymnastics Club offered a boys’ program as well as a girls’ program.
Meanwhile, Epperson also participated in other youth sports.
“I played Little League baseball at Price Field, I wrestled in junior high and I played football until the eighth grade,” he recalled.
By his sophomore year at Bartlesville High School he turned his full focus on gymnastics.
During Epperson’s evolution toward one of the nation’s top collegiate gymnasts and an international competitor, the local gymnastics club also went through a startling metamorphosis.
When Epperson first signed up — at the age of six — in 1972, Phillips gymnastics didn’t have a home facility.
“We had to move around a lot,” Epperson recalled. “We didn’t have a permanent spot to work out in.”
Among the venues the tumblers haunted during this nomadic period included the Dewey Fairground Building, an old vacated grocery store and the confines of the old Garfield High School.
It was a double-challenge. The heavy, precise gymnastic equipment had to be relocated from place to place and then set up and taken down.
In fact, Epperson’s first paying job was helping wrangle the equipment, for which he received a salary of $15 — big money for a teenager back in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Epperson continued to magnify his talent and draw attention from recruiters from throughout the nation.
As an aside, for those not familiar to male gymnastics, the six primary events are the floor exercise (without musical accompaniment), the vault, the steel rings, the horizontal bar, the parallel bars and the pommel horse.
“When I was in Bartlesville growing up, I was probably the best guy in town on the floor exercise,” he said.
In 1983, around the start of his senior year at Bartlesville, Epperson qualified as a member of a national team and went against international competition in Canada.
During his freshman season (1984-85) at Nebraska, he journeyed to Japan for another head-to-head matchup against standouts from multiple nations. Within months of that, he also competed in Romania. He broadened his geographic and athletic horizons in other international competitions as well.
Epperson also made a mighty impact in collegiate competition for Nebraska — which had worked hard to bring him on board.
“I had seven or eight schools wanting me to come out,” he said.
But recruiting rules allowed prospects to visit only five schools at the schools’ transportation expense. Among the schools that Epperson officially visited were the University of Oklahoma, Nebraska, UCLA and Ohio State.
He ultimately chose Nebraska.
“They (Oklahoma gymnastics) just weren’t very good at that time,” Epperson said. “I wanted to be on a national championship team.”
And that’s what happened — at the end of Epperson’s senior season (1987-88) the Cornhuskers won the NCAA title.
Epperson, meanwhile, excelled in different events.
As a freshman he earned All-American recognition on the parallel bars.
During his junior season, he once again reached the All-American realm, this time on the horizontal bars, "which was much for fun for me,” he said.
Even though Epperson didn’t get to All-American status on the floor exercise, “that was one of the highest scoring events my whole life,” he said.
In his corner all 16 years of his gymnastics pursuits were his mother and father.
“My mother loves it (Epperson being inducted into the BaHOF),” Epperson said. “She loves that I did gymnastics. She’s been a Bartlesville woman her whole life and she’ll be a very proud mom.”
As mentioned, Epperson’s father — a Phillips employee that felt proud of what his boy achieved with the company-sponsored team — passed away in the late 1980s.
“But was alive to see me win a national championship,” Epperson said.
Epperson also gives maximum credit to his former coach Strobel.
“He really took me from being a good gymnast to a great gymnast,” Epperson said. “I may or may not have been a college gymnast if not for him. … He set the foundation for me so that the college coaches could make me better. We (Epperson and Strobel) were a good team.”
Friday Epperson will step up firmly on both feet onto the podium. But somewhere in his heart lives that graceful gravity-defying disciplined bolt of power that plugged into his dreams with the energy that made them come true.
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Noah Hartsock
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NOAH HARTSOCK
Bartlesville High School’s basketball tradition has no shortage of incredible hardwood heroes during the seasons.
To attempt to list them now would be an exercise in foolishness — some deserving talents are bound to be left off.
But however the list would break down one thing would be for certain — Noah Hartsock would deserve a spot among the elite.
Not only for his stunning accomplishments in three years on the Bruin varsity but also for what he achieved on the major college and pro levels.
Hartsock — who hovered somewhere around 6-foot-8, give or take some millimeters — possessed the combination of graceful movements, focused power, elastic frame, rhino-hide toughness, and emotional discipline but angry hornet-like intensity.
On Friday he will become one of the youngest-ever individual inductees into the BaHOF.
“It was excitement for sure,” Hartsock said about his initial reaction last spring when he learned of his selection by the BSC. “We were on a trip, me and my wife, when I got the call and I was just really excited. A lot of gratitude and a lot of emotions came back from thinking back on Bartlesville. I started reminiscing a lot. … I haven’t been back to Bartlesville since I think the winter of 2012.”
In addition to being an incredible asset, Hartsock also is something of an 80-inch-tall good luck charm.
Bartlesville made it to the boys basketball state tourney during all three of years on varsity (2003-2006). In college, he helped power Brigham Young University to the NCAA tournament in each of his four seasons (2008-2012).
As a senior (2011-12) at BYU he averaged 16.8 points per game, nailed 57 percent of his field goals, shot 39 percent on three-pointers and 82 percent on free throws, averaged 4.8 rebounds, handed out 158 assists, blocked 177 shots and made 74 steals.
An ankle injury and surgery hampered him getting a fair shot at the NBA, although he tried out on his sore ankle for the Utah Jazz. Hartsock went on to play a full year of pro basketball in Belgium.
He went back to BYU as a graduate assistant and eventually went into high school coaching for one of the largest schools in Nevada. Hartsock — the father of five — is now an assistant at the College of Southern Nevada.
“I thought I’ll try it for a year,” he said about getting back into school coaching.
Hartsock remains the leading edge of the Bruin Basketball Renaissance in the early-to-mid-2000s, which was guided by legendary head coach Tim Bart.
Bartlesville basketball already wore a halo of glory by the time Hartsock was born. From 1985 through 1993, the Bruins went to state seven different seasons, played in the state final five times, and won the state crown three times.
When Bart arrived on the scene in 2000, Bartlesville hadn’t been to state since 1993. But during Bart’s first six seasons, the Bruins went to state four times (2001-02, 2003-04, 2004-05, 2005-06) — thus reviving Bartlesville’s dormant basketball glory.
Hartsock played on three of those teams, including the 2004-05 crew that played in the state championship game.
Parenthetically, Hartsock was part of a wave of five brothers — including Daniel, Nate, Jeremiah, Noah and Jakob — graced Bruin basketball during a 15-year period, most of it during Bart’s time.
There were many other great players during that time that coincided with the Hartsocks, especially during Jeremiah’s and Noah’s time.
The Bruins boasted many “big-time players,” in that era from 2003-06, Noah said. Among those he named were Jeremiah, Caleb Rovenstine, Ben Rovenstine, Sam Mitchell, Markell Carter, Randy Davis and Jacob Brazda.
“We had four or five guys over 6-foot-7,” Noah said. “Being part of that and being coached by coach Bart was special. … Coach Bart and coach (Rick) Johnson ran the hardest practices I ever had (including college and pro ball). Coach Bart ran a tight ship. He pushed everybody. It didn’t matter if you were the best player or the 15th man on the roster. That really helped us on our defensive toughness. I still kind of reference my own coaching to some of the drills and some of the things I experienced under coach Bart. … He was a really good high school coach.”
On the other hand, Bart got maximum production out of Hartsock, who averaged 27.6 points per game his senior season (2005-06) and close to double-digit rebounds per game, along with almost four blocks a game. As a junior, he flushed the nets with 19.9 ppg and pulled down 9.9 rpg.
During a state quarterfinal loss to Putnam City, he scored 36 of Bartlesville’s 49 points.
His list of honors from high school and college is exhausting.
High school — Frontier Conference Player of the Year, First-Team All-State, Oklahoma Tipoff Magazine Fab 5 pick, McDonald’s High School All-America nominee, KTUL-TV Elite 8 Champions Award for his area and others.
College — NABC All-District First Team (2012), USBWA All-District Team (2012), Basketball Times Southwest All-District (2012), All-West Coast Conference Team (2012), All-Mountain West Conference Honorable Mention (2011), Academic All-MWC (2011) and others.
As family has always been a major component of Hartsock’s life, several loved ones will make long journeys to Bartlesville to celebrate his induction, including his parents, long-time Bartlesville residents that moved in the early 2010s to the West Coast. At least two of his brothers also are slated to fly in, one from Chicago and another from Utah.
Among Hartsock’s plans are to give his oldest son a tour of Bartlesville and places that were a part of his growing up in town — as well as a stop at his favorite ice cream place.\
Among Noah’s claims to fame is being a part of the biggest victory comeback in NCAA men’s basketball tourney history. The Bruins trailed Iona, 49-24, with 6:12 remaining in the first half — and blasted back to win, 78-72, in the 2012 tourney.
Hartsock poured in 23 points to fuel the comeback.
“We just had to chip away a little bit,” he said. “We were fortunate enough to make our shots and make our own run. … I think I hit my last eight or nine shots.”
As mentioned above, Hartsock also had to fight through pain part of his senior season, due to an ankle injury. He got by on taping and painkillers until the season ended, and he could undergo an operation.
Now it’s time for Hartsock to come home — even if for just a weekend — to replenish his roots.
In referencing Bartlesville’s slogan “The City of Legends,” he said, “it's certainly a legendary city.”