Chillicothe graduate Tre Beard collects 2025 River States Conference Player of Year Award
Tre Beard. (Shawnee State University photo)
For the first time since the 2020-21 season — the very season that the Shawnee State men's basketball program won a NAIA National Championship — the men's basketball program at Shawnee State has a Conference Player of the Year Award winner.
Shawnee State graduate student Tre Beard has carved out his own legacy that will be remembered inside the men's basketball program at Shawnee State for a lifetime.
The talented 5-11 guard and Chillicothe High School graduate became the first Shawnee State men's basketball player to win a Conference Player of the Year honor since his national championship teammate EJ Onu accomplished the feat by obtaining the 2024-25 River States Conference's Player of the Year Award.
Having enjoyed a career that will certainly go down as one of the best in program history, Shawnee State graduate student and 2021 NAIA National Champion Tre Beard will depart the program as its winningest player in program history, having led the Bears to a 103-52 overall record in his five seasons on campus.
A key piece to two NAIA National Tournament teams in his first three seasons on campus as a role player, Beard took on a starring role over his final pair of seasons with the Bears, and proceeded to rack up Third-Team All-RSC honors during the 2023-24 season followed by First-Team All-RSC accolades in 2024-25.
Along with achieving the most victories in the history of the Shawnee State men's basketball program by any individual player, Beard is the only player in program history to win NAIA National Tournament games in two separate seasons. Beard is also a three-time NAIA Scholar-Athlete and a four-time Academic All-Conference honoree as well, finishing with an undergraduate cumulative GPA of 3.58.
For his Shawnee State men's basketball career, Beard collected 1,229 career points and hit 241 career three-pointers —marks that rank 10th and second in program history all-time. Beard's 91.5-percent free-throw mark is a new program record, having broken the previous record that he and Shawnee State men's basketball alum Devon Carter shared at 90.3 percent.
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