Region XIV Eastern Conference honors East Texas sportswriters

Two of Kilgore’s own and three other East Texas media icons were named Region XIV/Texas Eastern Conference Legends during a ceremony at the Region XIV Basketball Tournament at Wagstaff Gymnasium. Among the honored group were Phil Hicks of the Tyler Morning Telegraph and Jack Stallard of the Longview News-Journal, both of whom work for M. Roberts Media, parent company of the News Herald.

BY BRANDON OGDEN, Kilgore News Herald

Also honored were Manny Almanza with Kilgore College, as well as Benny Rogers and Mike Montfort.

The five men combined have provided coverage of the league for more than 200 years total.

“These five individuals have covered and promoted Region XIV, our student-athletes, coaches and member schools while being some of the most important supporters of junior college athletics,” Navarro College Athletic Director Michael Landers said in a statement.

Stallard attended Kilgore College in the spring of 1986, where he covered KC athletics as a student sports editor of the college newspaper, The Flare. At the age of 21, he became the sports editor of the News Herald.

He was the sports editor at the Lufkin Daily News from March 1990 to October 1997 when he moved back to Kilgore and became assistant sports editor at the Longview News-Journal and again began covering KC athletics.

He is currently the sports editor at the Longview News-Journal, a title he’s held since 2006. Jack has covered KC athletics for a total of 32 years during his 39-year career as a sportswriter in East Texas.

In 2004 and 2021, he was named Texas Girls Coaches Association Sportswriter of the Year, and in 2014, he won the American Southwest Conference Outstanding Media Service Award. In 2020, Jack was inducted into the East Texas Coaches Association Hall of Fame as its Distinguished Service Award honoree, and in 2024 he was inducted into the Kilgore College Athletic Hall of Fame.

He has been a contributing writer for Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine since 1998, writing about the Southwest Junior College Football Conference. He is the current president of the Texas Sports Writers Association.

Almanza was raised in El Paso and graduated in 1986 from the University of Texas at El Paso with a bachelor of arts in broadcast production.

He became the operations director for public radio station KTPB at Kilgore College in 1995 and has been at KC ever since. Almanza became the radio play-by-play voice of KC Athletics in the fall of 1997, and is now in his 27th year of broadcasting Ranger athletic events. He’s also known as “the Voice of Kilgore College.”

He is currently the director of communications at KC. During football season, Almanza is the radio play-by-play voice for the Tyler High School Lions.

Hicks has worked for the Tyler Morning Telegraph for more than 40 years. He is a graduate of John Tyler High School, Tyler Junior College and the University of Texas at Tyler. He started his sports writing career as a stringer covering high school football for the Palestine Herald-Press during college.

On Sept. 1, 1983, Hicks joined the Tyler Morning Telegraph and became the sports editor in 1990. He has covered about 500 football games, numerous state football championship games, state championship basketball games and state track and field meets. He’s covered eight Super Bowls, two World Series, two NBA championships, 10 Final Fours, 10 NJCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, eight NJCAA World Series and five NCAA softball tournaments.

He’s won countless awards in his career, including the 1993 Golden Hoops Award from the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches and the 2011 American Southwest Conference Outstanding Media Service Award. Most recently, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the East Texas Coaches Association at the 2023 East Texas Coaches Association Hall of Honor Banquet. He is the former president of the Texas Sports Writers Association.

Rogers joined the staff at Trinity Valley in 2009 as the assistant public information officer and was named sports information officer in 2012. Among his duties as sports information officer, he serves the college as the chairman of the Cardinal Hall of Fame selection committee as well as provides play-by-play game coverage on Cardinal Sports Network webcasts.

Rogers joined the Cardinal family after a 27-year career at the Athens Daily Review where he served as sports editor for the last 25 years. During his time at the Athens Daily Review, Rogers received numerous awards from Texas APME, TPA and NETPA for his coverage of sports in Henderson County and the surrounding counties.

Rogers is a lifelong resident of Malakoff and 1977 graduate of Malakoff High School. After high school, he attended TVCC from 1977-79 and was honored by the college in 2006 with the Distinguished Alumni Award at the Trinity Valley homecoming.

Montfort, a Corsicana native, is recognized as a sports historian and statistician for Corsicana and Navarro College Athletics since 1970. He has served as the Navarro College Sports Information Specialist since 2012.

The Baylor graduate worked 12 years as an award-winning sportswriter before a 24-year secondary-level teaching career — 22 at Frost ISD, where he sponsored a school newspaper, yearbook, video yeardiscs and taught distance-learning classes. On school weekends, he worked on radio broadcasts of Corsicana and Navarro football and basketball. He’s authored several magazine articles and has been a correspondent and contributor, regularly promoting Region XIV and Region V athletics via social media.