May 3, 2011
NSSA Foundation Board President Greg Jones and Executive Director
Dave Goren will present Milwaukee Brewers radio play-by-play
announcer Bob Uecker with his Hall of Fame plaque before tonight's
Brewers/Braves game at Turner Field. The presentation will
take place at 6pm in the visiting radio booth.
Because of his work schedule, Uecker will not be able to attend the
52nd Annual NSSA Awards Banquet & Hall of Fame Induction on May
16. Goren said, "I looked at the Brewers schedule to see if
they were going to be somewhere close to Salisbury. Lo and
behold, they were scheduled to be in Atlanta the week before the
Awards Weekend. Since it's only four hours or so from
Salisbury to Atlanta, we made plans through Mr. Uecker's assistant
to meet with him and present the plaque to him tonight."
Uecker will be officially enshrined, along with Brent Musburger and
Bob Ryan on May 16.
Pictures from tonight's presentation will be available later
tonight.
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May 2, 2011
SALISBURY, NC
-The National
Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association will hold an autograph
signing - free and open to the public - at Waterworks Visual Arts
Center on Sunday, May 15 from 2:00 to 3:00pm. Approximately 25 of NSSA's
State, National and Hall of Fame Sportscasters and Sportswriters of
the Year will be on hand to sign their names. Half will sign between 2:00
and 2:45pm; the other half will sign between 2:45 and
3:30pm.
NSSA Executive Director said he was gratified
by the number of winners who volunteered for the session. "These are some of the
biggest names in sportswriting and Sportscasting. They're here to be honored
and relax. Yet they're
willing to carve out some of that time for the people of Salisbury
and Rowan County."
Goren said the autograph session came about
because in previous years, contact between the local people and the
out-of-state winners was limited. "The people of NSSA
appreciate how important the local folks are to our
organization. And we
wanted to give everyone a chance to meet our honored guests. This is a great chance for
people who have listened, watched or read sports to meet the people
who are responsible for those stories. I'm hopeful that the people
of Salisbury and Rowan County will respond with a great
showing."< /p>
Waterworks Visual Arts Center is located at
123 East Liberty Street in downtown Salisbury.
-30-
LIST OF WINNERS SCHEDULED TO
SIGN (*-subject
to change)
Bob
Ryan - Hall of Fame Sportswriter
Mike
Tirico - National Sportscaster of the Year
Mark
McCarter - Alabama Sportswriter of the Year
Bob
Wisener - Arkansas Sportswriter of the Year
Gene
Deckerhoff - Florida Sportscaster of the Year
Wes
Durham - Georgia Sportscaster of the Year
Jeff
Schultz - Georgia Sportswriter of the Year
Bob
Behler - Idaho Sportscaster of the Year
Paul
Condry - Indiana Sportscaster of the Year
Terry
Hutchens - Indiana Sportswriter of the Year
Mary
Jo Perino - Kentucky Sportscaster of the Year
Rene
Cloukey - Main Sportscaster of the Year
Mick
McCabe - Michigan Sportswriter of the Year
Jay
Murry - Missouri Sportscaster of the Year
Will
Johnson - Missouri Sportswriter of the Year
Jim
Jeannotte - New Hampshire Sportscaster of the Year
Gary
Hahn - North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year
Paul
Keels - Ohio Sportscaster of the Year
Steve
Hyder - Rhode Island Sportscaster of the Year
Ron
Morris - South Carolina Sportswriter of the Year
John
Papendick - South Dakota Sportswriter of the Year
Mike
Keith - Tennessee Sportscaster of the Year
George
Commo - Vermont Sportscaster of the Year
Mike
Donoghue - Vermont Sportswriter of the Year
Steve
Cotton - West Virginia Sportscaster of the Year
Chuck
Landon - West Virginia Sportswriter of the Year
Keith
Kelley - Wyoming Sportscaster of the Year
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Apr 29, 2011
Salisbury, NC - April 29, 2011: The National Sportscasters
and Sportscasters Association & Hall of Fame announced today
that Virginia Commonwealth University's Shaka Smart (Division One)
and Shaw University's Cleo Hill, Jr. (Division Two) are the winners
of the inaugural Clarence E. 'Big House' Gaines College Basketball
Coach of the Year Awards. The Awards will be presented
at the NSSA's 52nd Annual Awards Banquet on Monday, May
14 at Catawba College's Goodman Gym.
Smart's first
two seasons, at age 34, at VCU are hard to match. After taking the Rams to the
CBI Championship in 2009-10, Smart's 2010-11 VCU team won five NCAA
Tournament games and made it all the way to the Final Four in
Houston. Smart served
as an assistant coach at Florida, Clemson and Akron before taking
over at VCU.
He is a magna
cum laude graduate of Kenyon College, with a master's degree from
California University (PA), and is married to the former Maya
Payne.
Hill,
Jr. was named the Head Men's Basketball Coach at Shaw University on
April 10, 2008 and just finished the most successful of his three
seasons there, winning the CIAA Tournament Championship and earning
an NCAA Tournament berth - his third Tournament appearance as a
head coach. Before
Shaw, Hill served as head coach at Cheyney University in
Pennsylvania and was an assistant at Shaw and Nebraska. The North Carolina Central
University graduate and his wife, the former Regina Boone are the
parents of one daughter, Sage Ellana.
The
Award is named for Gaines (1923-2005), who was best known for the
47 seasons he spent as head basketball coach at Winston-Salem State
University. Over that
time, his teams won 823 games, including the NCAA Division Two
National Championship in 1967. Gaines's historical ties to
Salisbury run deep -- he won his 800th game at
Livingstone College in 1990.
Among
the hundreds of players Gaines coached: Pro Basketball Hall of Famer
Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe; Cleo Hill, Sr., the first NBA first-round
draft choice from an HBCU (and father of Cleo Hill, Jr.); sports
media personality Stephen A. Smith.
Gaines
also served as president of the National Association of Basketball
Coaches and was a member of several Halls of Fame. He died in 2005 at the age
of 81.
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Apr 26, 2011
Here is
my interview with Wes Durham, who works for the
Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, broadcasting
play-by-play in football, basketball and baseball.
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Apr 26, 2011
Here is
my interview with Mike Grimm, who works for
Gopher Sports Properties, a division of Learfield Sports, and is
the 2010 Sportscaster of the Year in Minnesota.
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Apr 25, 2011
Josh Elliot, one of the most liked sportscasters on ESPN's morning
program SportsCenter has
decided to move to Good Morning America on
ABC. He had his final show anchoring SportsCenter last Friday, and
will start as a newsreader at GMA next month.
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Apr 20, 2011
COLUMBIA, SC The South Carolina Athletic
Hall of Fame will recognize University of South Carolina Baseball
Coach Ray Tanner, former Citadel Director of Athletics Les
Robinson, the Shrine Centers of the Carolinas and The State sports
columnist Ron Morris for their contributions to athletics in the
State of South Carolina.
Tanner, who guided the Gamecocks to their
first NCAA National Championship in 2010, will receive the
inaugural Willie Jeffries Ambassador Award while Robinson will be
recognized with the annual Bobby Richardson Sportsmanship
Award. The Shrine
Centers of the Carolinas will be recognized with the Felix 'Doc'
Blanchard Service to Sports Award and Morris will be honored with
the inaugural Herman Helms Media Excellence Award.
They will be distinguished along with the new inductees of the
SCAHoF during the 51st annual banquet, which is set for Monday, May
23, at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
Being enshrined this year
are South Carolina's Brad Edwards, who won a Super Bowl ring with
the Washington Redskins and Clemson¹s Chester McGlockton, who
earned All-Pro honors with the Oakland Raiders.
The Class of 2011 also consists of Finis
Horne, Lander University's longtime director of athletics and
basketball coach; legendary Greenville coach Joe Mathis; Gene
Moore, who played football and baseball at Clemson; University of
South Carolina graduate and longtime Gamecock Club director Ed
Pitts; and Army All-American and College Football Hall of Famer
Arnold Tucker.
Mathis and Moore will be enshrined
posthumously.
Tickets (table of eight for $500) and program sponsorships may be
purchased by calling the SCAHOF office at 803/779-0905. The affair,
which includes a reception, dinner and a raffle, begins at 5:30
p.m.
Ray Tanner
Tanner was a unanimous choice to be the
first recipient of inaugural Willie Jeffries Ambassador Award. The award is being presented
by the Piggly Wiggly Carolina Company, and is named in honor of
South Carolina State's legendary football coach, Willie Jeffries, a
member of seven halls of fame including the South Carolina
Athletic Hall of Fame and who serves as the annual banquet¹s
master of ceremonies.
Named Collegiate Baseball and Baseball
America's National Coach of the Year, Tanner is amidst his 15th
year as head coach of the Gamecocks. He continues to lead the
baseball program to unprecedented heights with his commitment to
excellence. Over the
last decade, Tanner has established one of the premier programs in
all of college baseball with milestones and accomplishments piling
up each season.
Atop the list is the 2010 national
championship, as the Gamecocks became the first team ever to win
six consecutive games in Omaha on the way to a national title, the
first men's national championship at the University of South
Carolina. This past
season's trip was the fourth to the College World Series for Coach
Tanner along with three consecutive trips from 2002-04.
Under Tanner's leadership, South Carolina
owns the longest current streak of NCAA Regional appearances among
the 12 Southeastern Conference schools with 11 straight trips to
the tournament dating back to the 2000 season. In that span, South Carolina
has eight NCAA Super Regional appearances (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010). South Carolina is one of
only six schools in the nation to make at least eight NCAA Super
Regionals in the last 11 years and one of only eight schools in the
country to have reached the NCAA Regionals every season from 2000
to the present.
Entering this season, the program's 11-year total record of 522-217
is the fourth highest win total among NCAA Division I schools. USC has 11 consecutive
seasons of 40 or more wins.
Les Robinson
Robinson, truly one of the 'good-guys' in
the world of intercollegiate athletics, will receive the
organization¹s annual Bobby Richardson Sportsmanship Award. The award, which began in
2005, is named for Sumter native and SCAHOF inductee Bobby
Richardson, who stood out as the reliable second baseman on
star-studded New York Yankees teams in the late 1950s and early
1960s.
A virtual Who¹s Who in intercollegiate athletics, the personable
Robinson is the only person in NCAA history to serve as head
basketball coach and director of athletics at three Division I
institutions having worked at The Citadel, East Tennessee State and
North Carolina State.
Robinson spent six years serving on the
prestigious NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee, one of the
NCAA¹s most influential groups. The committee is responsible for
site selection for each round of the NCAA Division I men's
basketball championships. Additionally, it chooses the at-large
teams that compete in the field, and makes many important decisions
regarding the NCAA Basketball Tournament. He remains involved as a
member of the NIT Selection Committee.
He served as the Bulldogs' basketball coach from 1974-85, having
spent the five previous seasons as an assistant coach, and became
The Citadel¹s AD on Sept. 1, 2000.
He retired on June 30, 2008,
and continues to live in the Charleston area.
In 2007, Robinson was recognized as the
AstroTurf Southeast Region¹s Director of Athletics of the Year and
the previous year was recognized with a 'Lifetime Honorary Alumnus'
citation from The Citadel Alumni Association. He is a 2007 inductee of the
East Tennessee State Athletic Hall of Fame.
Robinson has accumulated a lengthy list of
former basketball assistants and administrators who have become
head coaches and directors of athletics including USC's AD Eric
Hyman, Wofford AD Richard Johnson and College of Charleston AD Joe
Hull.
Last year's recipient was Greenwood High graduate and Appalachian
State standout Armanti Edwards.
Shrine Centers of the Carolinas
The Shrine Bowl Organization of the
Carolinas was selected to receive the Felix 'Doc' Blanchard Service
to Sports Award, which began in 2010, is named for the Bishopville
native and SCAHOF inductee Doc Blanchard. Blanchard was best known for
being the first-ever college junior to win the coveted Heisman
Trophy and the Maxwell Award. He was also the first-ever
football player to win the James E. Sullivan Award given to the
best athlete in the country. All three awards were given
in a single year (1945).
The Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas began in 1937 and has been
organized and supported by the Shrine Centers in North and South
Carolina every year since.
The Shrine Bowl matches the
best high school football players in the two states against each
other in December of each year.
Proceeds from the game go to support the
Shrine Hospitals and Burn Centers for Children. The Shrine Bowl and the fund
raising efforts of the supporting Centers have generated more than
$67 million in support for the hospitals. The Shrine Bowl has
highlighted the best college-bound football talent in both states
and also has contributed to fund medical treatment for more than
770,000 children in their hospitals and burn centers
nationwide.
Last year's inaugural recipient of the
Blanchard was U.S. District Judge Sol Blatt of Charleston for his
unending support of sports in South Carolina.
Ron Morris
The State newspaper sports columnist Ron
Morris will be the inaugural recipient of the Herman Helms Media
Excellence Award.
The honor, named for the longtime sports
editor/columnist of The State and the first media member inducted
into the SCAHOF, adds another award to Morris¹ growing list as he
has been recognized as the South Carolina Sports Writer of the Year
by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. Morris also swept the
' Triple Crown' of awards by the South
Carolina Press Association: sports
enterprise reporting (profile on SEC Commissioner Mike Slive),
sports feature story (on Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney) and
overall sports columns.
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