Betsy Dutton was working on her college degree as an aspiring teacher when opportunity knocked.
 
Dutton, then Betsy Halloran, studied theater and English at Sterling College in the early-1980s. Her theater advisor, Diane DeFranco-Kling, served on the Sterling USD 376 Board of Education and had children approaching high school age.
 
“She wanted a theater teacher for her kids,” Dutton said. “She helped push me in there.”
 
Dutton directed Sterling High School’s performance of “Deadwood Dick, or a Game of Gold” as a college junior in December 1980. Two years later, with her undergraduate degree in hand, she joined the SHS staff full-time and began a highly successful 41-year run as a theater, speech and debate educator.
 
In late March – inside the Betsy Dutton Theatre at SHS – Dutton was inducted into the Kansas State High School Activities Association Hall of Fame.
 
The trophy case outside the theater holds much of the evidence of Sterling’s decades of performing arts success under Dutton, who retired in 2023 but still teaches dual-credit courses. Sterling produced 27 KSHSAA state championships in speech and seven more in debate under Dutton’s tutelage, with 106 medalists in state debate and 345 in competitive forensics. Both of Betsy and her husband Dennis’ sons, Will and Max, are among those numbers.
 

Sterling’s theatrical music productions were also recognized multiple times with Jester Awards, a statewide program presented by Music Theatre Wichita.
 
And much of it started with a personable approach from Dutton, who graduated from Topeka High and was drawn to Sterling in part to learn under Kling and her husband, Gordon, longtime theater professors who retired in 2012.
 
“I taught a Sunday school class in town and had a lot of those kids who tried out for theater initially,” Dutton said. “The one thing that came out of that is they called me Betsy, and then I was Betsy to my students all 41 years. I think I started as Betsy because I was 20 years old, but I don’t think there was ever a disconnect from students in terms of respect.”
 
Dutton earned it with a tireless work ethic. She taught speech and English while guiding the theater and forensics programs early in her career. It frequently involved working around the schedules of students and their diverse extracurricular activities.
 
“There’s an intimacy that comes with teaching theater because you’re here late nights, you’re painting sets together, you’re designing lights, you’re doing all that,” Dutton said. “I would stay at school until 4:30 and get my classes in order, then I would come back for rehearsals at 6:30. It has to be that way at a small school.”
 
Dutton was able to morph her theatrical talents into forensics coaching, guiding Sterling to its first of 13 consecutive state speech titles in 1991. Another challenge awaited when Sterling started debate in 1994.
 
“I think there are some people who go through college who very distinctly just want to do debate and forensics,” Dutton said. “That’s a byproduct of a big school, I think. I did not do debate and forensics. I only did theater. So then I inherited a forensics program and started a debate program 12 years in.
 
“Those are different skillsets, but I have to say that being a theater person helps forensics because at least five of those events are acting events. That helped create some of that success because I knew theatrical material.”
 
Dutton leaned on others as she cultivated the Black Bears’ debate program, particularly her brother-in-law, Steve Harrell. Harrell recently retired after 37 years at Tonganoxie High School, where he coached 14 state championship teams in debate and four in forensics.
 
Harrell and Dutton are members of Sterling College’s Fine Arts Hall of Fame.
 
“I would say the biggest thing I have learned is debate,” Dutton said. “I didn’t ever do it myself. What was helpful to me is some of the people I worked with were college students who were doing college debate, and they came on as my assistants. I learned from them.
 
“I also had a lot of very, very bright kids to work with. My brother-in-law kind of helped me get started, but we grew as a team in understanding debate theory and debate process and procedures. A lot of it because of those students, and those college students who became my assistants.”
 
Dutton was inducted into the Kansas Speech Communication Association Hall of Fame in 2017, and was a key figure in Sterling being recognized by KSHSAA as its Performing Arts School of Excellence in 2021. The award recognizes accomplishments in speech, debate, music and theater.
 
Dutton draws joy from students who applied their performing arts skills beyond high school. Her younger son, Max, is a morning anchor and reporter for KWCH in Wichita. Another former student, Kimberly (McCreery) Kuo, went on to graduate from Stanford and served as a press aide to the late Senate Majority Leader and former presidential candidate Bob Dole.
 
Kuo placed at state in duet acting in 1988.
 
“She said that the improv training she received helped her the most because people are throwing crazy questions around and you’re having to adjust on the fly,” Dutton said.
 
The pipeline Dutton established at Sterling continues to flourish. Her debate and forensics successor, David Wilson, is a former student who has guided the Black Bears to three Class 2A speech team titles and two Class 3-1A 4-speaker debate titles after serving as Dutton’s assistant in her final year.
 
Sterling’s current theater director, Greg McGlynn, is an SHS graduate who acted in some of the first plays Dutton directed at the school. Dutton’s KSHSAA Hall of Fame induction in March took place prior to SHS Theatre’s presentation of “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
 
“What I’m thrilled with is I’ve had kids come back who have made good lawyers,” Dutton said. “It can make a good doctor. Debate, for example, you have to get up on a Saturday morning and do five 1½-hour rounds and you’re giving 8-minute speeches.
 
“There’s nothing else that teaches that. Even in memorized speeches that you do in forensics, there’s nothing that teaches that. There’s also nothing that teaches you when you’re performing on stage and something goes wrong, you still have to cover it and you have to go on. These skills are a bit of a lost art.”
 
Thanks to Betsy Dutton and her legacy, they remain in the spotlight at Sterling.