Legendary high school football coaches Vic Grider (South Pittsburg) and Ken Colquette (Marion County) won a combined eight state high school championships and lead the 17 member class of 2018 for the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame.
The induction dinner is set for Monday February 26 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chattanooga Convention Center.
Joining Grider and Colquette into the hall of fame are Joe Adams for baseball, Johnny Labbous (boxing), Dale McDowell (drag racing) Herbert “Book” McCray and Zandra Ownby Morris for basketball, Teresa Lawrence Phillips and Leon Rash in the officials/administration category, Calvin Harrison (softball), Stan Corcoran (swimming), Bayly Taff (tennis), Jeff Gaither and Stephanie Strickland Sheridan for track and field, the late James Lowe (weightlifting), Gary Speegle (wrestling) and B.B. Branton (sports media).
HOF Tickets: Six special award winners, including area male and female athletes of the year, also will be honored at the induction banquet. Tickets cost $40 and may be bought through Catherine Neely at 423-842-7274. Tables of eight can be reserved for $320.
JOE ADAMS (baseball)
The Athens native and former Tennessee Tech catcher won two baseball district titles at McMinn County, then went 43-9 with a state-runner-up finish in two years at Cookeville High … 387 wins in 18 years at Bradley Central with nine district titles and a pair of state runner-up finishes … son of a legendary coach, Ace Adams ,,, father of a daughter, Judy, who, became a Division I basketball coach, and son Travis, now the Bradley baseball coach … Halls of Fame: Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association(2015).
B.B. BRANTON (media)
He has been a sports writer for the Lookout Mountain Mirror, the Chattanooga Free Press and Chattanoogan.com … served as sports information/media relations director for Athletes in Action, Seattle Pacific University, Chapman College, Major League Volleyball and Sewanee: The University of the South … graduate of Lookout Mountain School (’62), McCallie School (’69) and Ole Miss (’73) … 1997 co-Tennessee Tennis Writer of the Year (w/Eddie Baker) while with the Chattanooga Free Press … 2017 recipient of McCallie School’s True Blue Award … two-time all-star in the mountain’s Little Boys Baseball League (Coca Cola Cokes), scored a run in the 1961 Little Boys World Series and scored the winning touchdown at age 11 for his school football team in a bowl game … . He was a member of McCallie’s Mid-South wrestling champions in 1966-68 and was All-Mid-South in 1966.
KEN COLQUETTE (football)
Career record of 257-94 and four state titles … coached Marion County to four state football championships and two runner-up finishes in 17 years at the Jasper school … After earning their first TSSAA title in 1990, the Warriors won three from 1992 to 1995, going 56-1 in those four seasons … also coached at Bridgeport (Ala.) before Marion and at Vidalia (Ga.), Grundy County and Sequatchie County.
STAN CORCORAN (swimming)
He’s an eight-time Tennessee high school boys’ swimming coach of the year with seven state championships and five runner-up team finishes in 26 seasons as McCallie’s swimming coach … an All-American swimmer and water polo player in high school in Pennsylvania and participated in both sports at Indiana University ... a three-year Hoosiers starter in water polo. … his McCallie standouts are headed by Sean Ryan, who represented the United States in the 2016 Olympics ... Corcoran made the USA Swimming national A team coaching list in 2009-11 and was the Southeastern coach of the year in 2010 … has coached 56 swimmers and water polo players to All-American status ... He has coached Chattanooga Area Swim League and year-round club programs since 1992 … has taught community swim lessons, lifeguarding and CPR classes and hosted triathlon and masters clinics and Special Olympics meets for years.
JEFF GAITHER (track and field)
The Girls Preparatory School coach since 1997 is a reigning cross country state champion and has been Chattanooga girls’ cross country coach of the year the last two seasons … has led GPS to state titles in 2005-07 and twice selected as National Federation state coach of the year with the Bruisers ... The former McCallie three-sport athlete (cross-country, track and basketball) and University of Georgia cross country runner coached Baylor to a boys’ state cross country title in 1988 … coached Darlington in Rome to two boys’ and two girls’ state championships and earned four Georgia Athletic Coaches Association coach-of-the-year awards in seven years ,,. Gaither has coached 48 individual state track and cross country champions and is a two-time Boston Marathon finisher who has completed 20 other races of marathon distance or beyond.
VIC GRIDER (football)
Nineteen years as South Pittsburg High School football coach with a 197-49 record and four state championships and a pair of state runner-up finishes … son of longtime South Pittsburg High School coach Don Grider … has coached 47 all-state players and 21 who went on to college programs from the Class A school … as a player for the Pirates, he was All-Sequatchie Valley Conference and All-Tri-State in 1985 before going on the University of Tennessee and working as a manager in the football program.
CALVIN HARRISON (softball)
The U.S. Army Vietnam veteran played 17 years in Chattanooga’s renowned top men’s fast pitch league and was a local all-star 10 times and three times made all-state and All-South Atlantic Region tournament teams ... He led the Dixie Major league in batting average two years and in stolen bases five times … played two full seasons without making a fielding error. He went to three ASA national tournaments, two as a player-manager for Combustion Engineering, where he worked for 37 years and traveled internationally as manager of sales from 1992 to 2007 ... A three-year basketball letterman as well as a baseball captain at Central High School … was a TSSAA basketball and softball official and called college basketball games and in 2004 he was the club champion at Creeks Bend Golf Club.
JOHNNY LABBOUS (boxing)
Southern Golden Gloves champion at age 17 in 1964… won four Chattanooga Golden Gloves titles from 1960-65 … also competed in golf and track and field at Brainerd High School … Now a resident of Goodlettsville, Tenn., he is an NHRA Hall of Fame drag racer …He is a five-time division champion in the National Hot Rod Association and has double-digit race wins in national events, including four in Spring Nationals ... won the 2003 Million Dollar Race in Memphis and earned the last two of his multiple Dick Moroso five-day race victories 27 years apart in 1986 and 2013 ... he is still winning races at age 71 in 2017, including a $10,000 first place at Bowling Green, Ky., and a $5,000 prize in Nashville.
JAMES LOWE (deceased, weightlifting)
Mr. Chattanooga and Mt. Tennessee in 1948 and 1949 in weightlifting and body building representing the Frye Institute ... In lifting he was undefeated in his weight class from 1940 to 1949, winning city and state championships all 10 of those years … in 1949 he was the “outstanding lifter” in the Junior Nationals, where his 720 pounds of total weight for the press (230), snatch (215) and clean and jerk (275) were within 10 pounds of a national record. … a Mid-South champion as early as 1939 and received the Southern Perfect Physique honor the following year … served four years in the Army Air Force in World War II ... A graduate of City High and then in the top five of his class at the University of Chattanooga … taught chemistry and was a vice principal at Lakeview High School before entering the business world with Container Corp … director of personnel and rehabilitation at Goodwill Industries from 1963 to 1984 and then served as Goodwill’s president until retiring in 1989.
HERBERT “BOOK” McCRAY (basketball)
The latest Greater Chattanooga hall of fame inductee from the “Louisville connection” on UTC’s Division II national runners-up in 1976 and champions in 1977 … four-year starter at forward for UTC ... Then he stayed in Chattanooga and became an educator. He was a teacher, coach and administrator in his 26 years in the local public-school system, from elementary grades through middle school and high school until retiring in 2009 ... Even as a school administrator he coached in his spare time, through his Chattanooga Basketball Foundation that evolved into the Independent Youth Services Foundation with a focus on male mentoring ... He also founded the Project Success youth development program and was the Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year in 1994.
DALE McDOWELL (auto racing)
The Chickamauga, Ga., resident is a 1999 dirt-track racing national champion and 1994 Southern All Stars champion … has finished in the top eight in Xtreme (Hav-A-Tampa), World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil Late Model national series points nine times and is in the Xtreme Millionaire's Club ... won the inaugural Battle of Bristol in 2000 and the 2005 World 100 in Eldora, Ohio, and he had two $10,000 wins last year ... He has 40 career SAS race wins, 31 in the Xtreme (Hav-A-Tampa) series, 10 in the World of Outlaws series and eight in the Lucas series. Halls of Fame: National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2017.
ZANDRA OWNBY MORRIS (basketball)
A successful coach at various school levels in Bradley County for 39 years, most notably at Cleveland High from 1986 to 1993 … She was the most valuable player in state-championship triumphs in the eighth grade and in 1970 at Bradley Central High, where she scored 2,455 points in her career, and she was the MVP of the state all-star game as a senior ... was two-time all-state and all-region at Cleveland State and all-tournament when the Lady Cougars finished fourth in the nation …state player of the year as a sophomore, and in her two seasons at the junior college she averaged 19.2 points and 8.5 rebounds a game and the team went 56-7 ... While playing at Tennessee she totaled 651 points and 311 rebounds in two seasons and received the Lady Vol Torch Award …
TERESA LAWRENCE PHILLIPS (officials/administrators)
She played basketball at Vanderbilt after starring at GPS, but she is being honored primarily for her nearly 16 years as athletic director at Tennessee State after coaching the women’s basketball team there from 1989 to 2000 ... She was the USA Today national coach of the year in 1990 and the Ohio Valley Conference coach of the year three times, and as AD she made history as the one-game coach of the TSU men ... Her 1993-94 Lady Tigers won the program's first OVC regular-season and tournament championships, and the next year they went 22-7, 12-4, and shared the regular-season title ... She previously coached the Fisk women for four years, with two regular-season and tournament titles She was also an assistant coach for three years at Vanderbilt, where she had been the inaugural Lady Commodore overall athlete of the year. She was the first female black athlete at Southeastern Conference school ... Halls of Fame: GPS, Lookout Mountain
LEON RASH (officials/administrators)
He played football, baseball and basketball at the old Bridgeport (Ala.) High School and was a three-year letterman in baseball at Middle Tennessee State University … the longtime Jasper resident is best known in the area sports world for his 40-plus years as a TSSAA official ... Inducted into the TSSAA Hall of Fame in 2012 … has worked numerous postseason games, including three state basketball tournaments, served as supervisor and assigning officer for the Southeast Tennessee Basketball Officials Association, was a TSSAA officials camp director and received an A.F. Bridges “official of the year” award for his teaching and promotion of citizenship and sportsmanship in high school athletics ... helped organize the baseball umpires association in the Sequatchie Valley in the mid-1970s and he is in his 18th year as alderman for the town of Jasper ... Halls of Fame: TSSAA (2012)…
STEPHANIE STRICKLAND SHERIDAN (track and field)
Now a nurse practitioner, she was a two-time state long jump champion and played on a state-champion basketball team at Brainerd High School, where she also played volleyball … A high school All-American in track and field, she competed in that sport and volleyball at Jackson State University ... Sheridan holds a doctorate in nursing practice from UTC and is on the advisory board for registered nurses at Chattanooga State, and she is a past president of the American Nephrology Nurses Association … She has had articles published on subjects such as the need for a comprehensive foot care model and the implementation and sustainability of electronic health records.
GARY SPEEGLE (wrestling)
A high school wrestling state champion for coach Dr. John Farr at Red Bank as a senior in 1967 and the school’s salutatorian that same year … placed second in the state in the 98 pound class in 1965 and 1966 … a member of the Lions’ state championship team in 1965 and also was a Southeastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association title as a senior at Georgia Tech, where he received a degree in physics in 1971 ... He came back to Red Bank and coached wrestling and cross country the next two years, but he has made his mark as a co-inventor on three systems with United States patents…
BAYLY TAFF (tennis)
A member of Baylor’s state champion tennis team in 1979 and was captain of the school’s Chattanooga Rotary champions in 1980 … in USTA play in 1980, he was ranked No. 3 in singles in the South (seven states) and won state 18-under singles and doubles titles ... ranked No. 3 in the South also in 16s singles in 1978, when he won the state singles title in that age group, was a doubles runner-up, and he finished third in 14s singles and first in doubles in 1976 ... Taff went on to play tennis at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he played No. 1 singles and doubles in 1983 and 1984 and was a 1984 captain on the team that won the conference … had 106 career singles and doubles collegiate victories and spent 12 years in the U.S. Navy, eight as a tactical pilot ... While still in college, he placed third in the 1982 Singles National Amateur Championships and won the 1983 Tennessee men’s singles tournament ... An Atlanta resident, he was the Georgia state 45s champion and a U.S. grass court singles quarterfinalist in 2009, and he is a board member and treasurer of the Georgia Tennis Foundation.
contact B.B. Branton at williambranton1962@gmail.com