A three-sport athlete out of Ganado High School in Northeast Arizona, Rodney Wallace was a highly-sought after recruit, but not for track and field. Wallace was courted by the likes of Arizona, Arizona State and Oklahoma to play football and wrestle, but it was Rick Beelby, a track and field coach at Wayland Baptist, who lured the talented athlete off the Indian reservation for a chance to walk down the road less traveled.

Though Wallace ultimately ended up as a decorated track and field athlete, it was not his first love. That belonged to wrestling.

“That was my number-one deal. It was just natural to me," Wallace said. "I didn’t start football until I was a freshman in high school, and then when I was a sophomore I finally started track.”

“My uncle told me that it was my choice, but that I was going out for track,” Wallace said with a laugh. “I did the long jump and the 100 meters.”

Because Wallace’s uncle gave him the “option” to run track, a new door opened for him. This door was only one that God could have foreseen opening, and it led to Wayland.

Beelby, who is also being inducted into the Hall of Honor this fall, signed Wallace without watching him run a single race. In fact, Beelby didn’t even travel to Ganado to watch Wallace; he was on there to watch one of his teammates.

“We ran on an old-fashioned track where you had to line it with chalk,” Wallace said. “A snow storm came in that day, so the meet was cancelled and Coach Beelby didn’t even see me run. He just took a chance on me.”

Not only did Beelby take a chance on Wallace, but Wallace took a chance on Wayland. Originally from Joliet, Ill., Wallace moved to Arizona to live with his uncle when he was a sophomore in high school. He had never heard of Wayland, much less seen the campus.

“When Coach Beelby offered me a scholarship, I had never even heard of Wayland,” Wallace said. “I got the scholarship in the spring but didn’t even visit the campus until that summer.”

Wallace, primarily a sprinter, said that Beelby wanted him to compete in the decathlon. That would take some effort, however, as Beelby assigned Wallace to hit the weights over the summer so that he could bulk up.

“Coach Beelby told me that he was going to try me in the decathlon, so I needed to lift weights so I could get bigger,” Wallace said. “So I did that, but I was too big, so then he said that I was going to run cross country. That’s how I started my journey on the decathlon.”

Though the journey was tough, it proved to be fruitful. Wallace became an eight-time NAIA All-American, was named the Sooner Athletic Conference Most Outstanding Athlete for track, won Wayland’s prestigious Roscoe Snyder Outstanding Male Athlete Award, and now holds the school record for points in the decathlon.

In the decathlon, Wallace finished second at the 1993 NAIA Championships and fourth at the ’94 NAIA Championships. In his '94 performance, Wallace scored 7,210 points, the current WBU record.

Wallace also earned all-American honors in the mile relay, the 4x400m relay, and the two-mile relay, and was a two-time all-American in the 600-yard run and the pentathlon.

The long list of accolades did not come without a lot of hard work, as Wallace practiced for hours a day to prepare himself for the decathlon.

“I was at the track for five or six hours a day when everyone else was there for just a couple hours,” he said. “Besides running in the mornings, I was at the track doing three practices a day. I told myself that I’d have to push myself mentally because that’s how the competition was. You were out there the whole time.

“I was the type of person that hated to lose, so I needed to practice like that to get myself ready mentally.

“I was able to improve because I had to practice the different events with different individuals, so I was able to gain knowledge from them because I originally did not have any (knowledge) on many of the events (in the decathlon).”

Wallace’s hard work paid off, especially in the pole vault, his weakest event when he first started. In the 1994 NAIA Championships, Wallace was able to clear 15 feet, an accomplishment that seemed inpossible when he started training four years earlier.

“I remember when I first started training for the decathlon, I could high jump higher than I could pole vault,” Wallace said. “We had to make a makeshift bar that was lower than five feet so I could practice. So it was a big moment for me when I cleared 15 feet, three inches at the ’94 Championships. I was pretty proud of myself.”

Because of Wallace’s athletic success, that’s what people knew him for on campus at Wayland, but by the time he graduated in 1996 it was a completely different story.

Wallace was raised in the church and knew about God, but claims that he was not a follower of Christ. While Wallace wanted to be known for what he did athletically, God had other plans.

“Early on at Wayland people there knew who I was, but it was for the wrong reasons,” Wallace said. “I came in with the attitude that, ‘You’re gonna know who I am.’

“It goes back to when I was in high school. Most people thought I would choose wrestling or football, but God brought me to Plainview so that I could get a ‘plain view’ of Him. It was God all the way.

“I wasn’t looking for God, but God was looking for me. I didn’t go to Wayland because I was religious or because I was looking for God. It took me about two or three years to change.”

After learning that BSM stood for Baptist Student Ministries and not Black Student Ministries like he originally thought, Wallace became interested in BSM nonetheless thanks in part to the director at the time, Jeff Box.

“Athletically, Coach Beelby was like a father figure to me, but Jeff was the one that started to help motivate me in a spiritual sense. They both knew that it was going to take some work for me to get better. They saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

“I was saved through Wayland. When I first got there I didn’t want to go to chapel or take the religion courses. I remember signing up for Old Testament my freshman year and having to drop it because I was so bored. I kept falling asleep. I just didn’t want to be there.

“Now it’s completely different. I love the Old Testament. Who would have ever thought that would prepare me for preaching today?”

Once Wallace’s attitude started to shift, he began noticing ways that he could improve himself at Wayland. One of those was by investing his time with people with whom he would not ordinarily hang out.

“When I would be in the cafeteria, it seemed like everybody sat at their own tables,” Wallace said. “Everyone had their cliques and everyone was separate.

“God showed me that for me to get what I need, I had to change tables. That’s when I started to change. It didn’t matter who they were, I just got myself out there.”

The change in Wallace’s life was evident, and he went on to win awards such as the Spinning Wheel, given to students who exhibit leadership and campus involvement (he won that twice), Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities, and the Wayland Baptist University Citizenship Man of the Year in 1996, the highest honor for any Wayland student.

Plainview’s Happy Union Baptist Church also played a major role in Wallace’s transformation. Wallace heard about the church through members of the track team and got connected with Richard Miller, a former standout basketball player at Wayland and fellow Hall of Honor member.

“Richard and I developed a relationship because our lives were really the same with him being from Alabama and me from Illinois, and we both ended up at Wayland,” Wallace said. “He became a real factor in my life sometime around my junior or senior year.”

It was after his newfound relationship with Christ and his experiences with BSM and Happy Union that Wallace decided that he wanted to start reaching out to others who may be in a similar situation as he was when he first came to Wayland.

Wallace’s wife, Sarah, started to play the piano at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Hale Center, and they had heard that he was involved in FCA, so they asked the Wallaces to work with the youth at Jerusalem Baptist Church.  

The couple obliged, and after three years of working at Jerusalem Baptis, the Wallaces returned to Happy Union to serve in the same role after being ordained in 2004.

“After three years, it was as if God was speaking to my wife and me, saying that it was time to head back to Happy Union,” Wallace said. “We returned but we said to each other that all we wanted to do was to be fed the word. Our plan was not to work within the church, but after a couple of years my wife and I were first approached about helping with the college students. Our reply was, ‘Wherever you need us.’

“After a week of praying, God showed myself, my wife and Richard Miller (the current senior pastor) that working with the youth is the area that we needed to be working.  

“In 2004 my wife and I were ordained as ministers of the gospel under Richard Miller. I was also installed as the youth pastor at Happy Union Baptist Church.”

After 10 years in that role, Wallace now is serving in the media department at the church.

In addition to serving in the church, Wallace has taught in the Plainview Independent School District since 1996. Hetaught seventh-grade math from 1996-2009 and algebra I and math models at Plainview High School from 2009-14.

Wallace was named Teacher of the Year at Coronado Junior High in 2004 and Teacher of the Year at Plainview High School in 2012.

He earned his Masters of Education degree with a principal certification from Wayland last May, and now is the assistant principal at Estacado Junior High.
He and his wife have three children, Marc, Christian and Jordan.

Wallace’s life is a little different now to say the least, and it all started with a coach taking a chance on a kid on an Indian reservation.

“Wayland didn’t force itself upon me, but through Wayland I saw that I needed to change some stuff in my life,” he said. “I was raised right, but I didn’t follow it. With Wayland, I was able to see that.

“This school helped me become the person I am now, and it was by way of track. God gave me many talents, and through that he was able to find me.

“Through it all I want others to see, especially my boys, that hard work pays off. God has a plan for our life and it takes work to see his plan. Many opportunities are going to come our way, but when we do not know which direction to go, we just have to ‘let go and let God.’ He does not make any mistakes."