Cindy Kemp Battle, Cathy Baker-Cirac and Beth Crouch will be honored today and Saturday as the newest members of the GPS Athletic Hall of Fame.
Battle is a former Bruisers tennis star from the class of 1965. Baker-Cirac was a swimmer and 1970 alumna, and Crouch excelled as a diver and graduated in 1990.
Battle, who works as a pro with the Universal Tennis Academy in Atlanta, was ranked in the top 10 nationally in juniors for seven years and was the Tennessee women’s state champion at the age of 16. Coached by Jerry and Jimmy Evert, she was a five-year member of the Southern Wightman Cup and a three-time member of the national team.
She played No. 1 singles for Alabama and represented the Crimson Tide in the NCAA tournament before going on to a pro career that included three appearances in the Women’s U.S. Open. She later coached tennis at GPS and directed Southern Girls, Virginia Slims and Rotary Girls tournaments.
Baker-Cirac was a national top-five AAU swimmer in the 50 and 200 freestyle events in 1965, and she won the Johnson Swimming Award as a junior school student at GPS and the Kistler Swimming Award in her sophomore through senior years. She also was involved in volleyball, the Terpsichord dance company and the synchronized swim team and was voted most popular senior at GPS.
She earned degrees from the Chattanooga and Knoxville campuses of the University of Tennessee and has worked in public health for a quarter century, serving as a field investigator and counselor in HIV and STD control and domestic violence programs. She’s now a trainer, health program adviser and specialist with the California Department of Public Health and lives in Sacramento.
Crouch began diving as a 9-year-old with the Signal Mountain summer swim team and began competing for the GPS varsity as an eighth-grader. She finished third in the state meet as a freshman, second the next two years and first as a senior. The All-American diver won all of her dual meets her last two years, won the Southeastern meet twice and finished third at the Easterns.
During her high school years, Crouch participated with Olympians Greg Louganis, Michelle Mitchell and Jenny Kiem at a diving training camp in Florida. She graduated from the University of Tennessee and then earned an associate degree in nursing and works as an emergency room nurse at Memorial Hospital. She also coaches the GPS middle school diving team.