Jacksonville – Jacksonville State has announced the 2025 Class of its Athletics Hall of Fame, honoring three former athletes and one legendary leader of more than two decades.
 
The latest elite class features former softball Player of the Year and first team all-region selection, Nikki Prier, and all-conference basketball star Walker D. Russell, who went on to be the first Gamecock to make an NBA debut. Also inducted is a baseball duo that includes Jax State's Division I leader in career wins from the mound, Donovan Hand, and three-time Coach of the Year – and stadium namesake – Jim Case. 
 
The class will be formally inducted at the biennial Athletics Hall of Fame Banquet on Friday, Nov. 28 and will be honored during the Nov. 29 football game vs. Western Kentucky. Hall of Fame Banquet ticket information will be available at a later date.
 
Prier had one of the most decorated careers in Jax State softball history on Hall of Fame coach Jana McGinnis' teams from 2007-10. A three-time All-Ohio Valley Conference honoree, Prier was tabbed the 2009 OVC Player of the Year posting a .379 batting average with 20 doubles, 12 home runs and 50 RBI. She earned NFCA First Team All-Region honors that season and helped the Gamecocks to their first-ever Top 25 ranking. In Jax State's career record books, Prier still ranks second in doubles (62), third in RBI (151), fourth in home runs (38) and fifth in hits (235) and runs scored (155). During her career, the Gamecocks won OVC regular season crowns in 2008 and 2009, and claimed OVC Tournament titles in 2008 and 2010, where she was named Tournament MVP as a senior. Prier's Gamecocks advanced to three straight NCAA Tournaments – becoming the first OVC team in history to earn an at-large bid in 2009 where they would go on to beat James Madison, Nebraska and Tennessee to win the Knoxville Regional and reach the first Super Regional in school history. She was named the 2010 Female Eagle Owl Award winner.
 
Russell, a Pontiac, Mich., native, became the first Gamecock to reach the NBA, after signing with the Detroit Pistons in 2011 after a series of professional stops in other countries. While at Jax State, he scored 1,182 points to originally set the school's Division I scoring record at the time and remains fifth on that list today as one of 24 Gamecocks all-time to score 1,000 points. The two-time All-OVC selection was an equally skilled distributer and owns the school's Div. I career assists record with 590 from 2003-2006. He owns three of the top four single-season assist marks, including a record 211 in 2004-05. That season, he also led the Gamecocks in points (421) and steals (64). He ranks third on the school's Div. I career list for steals (160) and made free throws (357). At the stripe, he twice went 10-for-10 in a game to tie the record for best percentage and on Feb. 5, 2005, he established the school record for most free throws made in a game when he connected on 18-straight attempts from the line against Tennessee Tech.
 
Hand needed only three seasons with the Gamecocks from 2005-2007 to cement his name atop multiple Jax State pitching marks. His 289.2 innings pitched still stands as the most by a Jax State pitcher. He earned first or second team All-OVC honors each of his three seasons while compiling a 26-16 career pitching record, which also still stands as the highest win total in the Gamecocks' Division I era and second-most wins all-time. Hand led the Gamecock pitching staff in wins in each of his three seasons and is the only Division I player in program history with multiple seasons of at least nine wins. He helped win the 2005 OVC regular season title and the 2006 OVC Tournament title to send Jax State to the NCAA Tournament. His Gamecock career came to a close early when he was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 14th round of the 2007 Major League Baseball Draft. He would later make his MLB debut for the Brewers on May 26, 2013 where he pitched 4.2 scoreless innings against the Atlanta Braves. Hand's final MLB outing came with the Cincinnati Reds in 2015.
 
Hand will enter the Hall of Fame alongside his coach, Jim Case.
 
Hired in 2002, Case guided the Gamecocks to national prominence at the Division I level during a 22-year tenure before retiring in 2023. A five-time OVC Coach of the Year, Case stepped away from Jax State with a 673-559 overall record and numerous conference titles. The program's state-of-the-art stadium, which Case was instrumental in making a reality, was named in his honor prior to its opening in 2019. That season, the Gamecocks went on to win yet another OVC Tournament Championship and advance to NCAA Regionals, where the team would eliminate Illinois and Clemson for the program's first Division I postseason wins.
 
Altogether, Case led Jax State to three regular season conference titles in 2005, 2008 and 2009 and won OVC Tournament titles five times in 2004, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2019. He coached 85 all-conference players, 18 All-Americans and saw 23 players drafted in the MLB Draft, including fellow Jax State Hall of Famer Todd Cunningham, who became the highest drafted player in the Jim Case Era when the Atlanta Braves selected him with the first pick of the second round in 2010. Case's Gamecocks competed in the ASUN Conference for two seasons in 2002-03 and then dominated the OVC over the next 18 seasons before returning to the ASUN in 2022. In the OVC, his teams finished in the top five in 16 of the 17 seasons in which a champion was crowned. Jax State went 272-150 (.645) in conference play when Case filled out the lineup. His teams won more than 30 games 16 times.
 
Case spent 41 seasons in Division I baseball, taking over the Jax State program after a four-year run as an assistant coach at Mississippi State which followed an 11-year stint as an assistant at UAB.