Local sports hall of fame adding 22

Bill Emendorfer is the president of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. On Feb. 27 he will go into the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame.

The former Cleveland High School and University of Tennessee football and wrestling standout will be among 22 inductees in the dinner ceremony at the Chattanooga Convention Center. Emendorfer, who lives in Athens, is being enshrined for football along with another former Volunteers star, longtime NFL punter Herman Weaver.

Frank Burke and Larry Simcox are being inducted for baseball, Regina Kirk and Ed Odom for basketball, John Disterdick for boxing, Mickey McCamish for golf, Nancy Turner Powell and Ken Windsor for softball, Scott Ferguson and the late Jimi Flowers for swimming, Turner Howard and Scott Webb for tennis, Bill McMahan and Virgil Roberson for track and field and Kenny Hill and Steve Logsdon for wrestling.

Bowler Derold Millsaps is a "special category" honoree, and Marsha Goodwin and Toby Silberman are being inducted as officials/administrators. Huntsville Times columnist Mark McCarter, a Chattanooga native who began his award-winning career with the Chattanooga News-Free Press, is this year's media inductee.

Tickets for the 6:30 p.m. banquet cost $35 and are available through Hall of Fame president John Farr at 423-875-9282.

"I think we have one of the best classes we've had," Farr said Saturday. "I think it's a good crew of inductees all across the board, and many of the honorees have made some outstanding records. I think that's going to make a good night for us."

Emendorfer was the state heavyweight wrestling champion in 1968 and the runner-up the next year, after a senior football season in which he was captain of Cleveland's first state-title team and second undefeated squad in a row. A two-way lineman, he was the player of the year in East Tennessee and listed among the top 10 high school All-Americans, and he went on to UT and was the runner-up for Southeastern Conference freshman of the year and then started every game for Vols teams that went 31-5 (best in the country for those three years) with three bowl wins and three top-10 finishes. He was a first-team All-SEC guard and received All-America honorable mention as a senior.

Weaver, nicknamed "Thunderfoot," had an 11-year NFL career with the Lions and Seahawks and made two Pro Bowl appearances. Moving to the Chattanooga area as an adult, he was a high school football coach at Notre Dame and Chattanooga Valley and for years has been involved in sports ministry. An all-around athlete, he was an all-state tight end and all-state basketball player for Villa Rica (Ga.) High School before becoming an All-America punter for UT.

Burke, a former Middlebury College baseball player, became part-owner and president of the Chattanooga Lookouts in 1995 and maintained a very visible hands-on approach. That included overseeing the building of AT&T Field overlooking the Tennessee River and implementing numerous memorable promotions while maintaining strong relationships with the Cincinnati Reds and then the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Simcox starred at East Ridge High School and Cleveland State Community College before becoming an All-SEC shortstop with Ole Miss and being drafted by the Houston Astros. He made it to the Southern League as a player but had what became a career-ending knee injury in May 1983, and then he spent two decades as an assistant coach at Ole Miss and Tennessee. He was with two Vols teams that finished third in the College World Series.

Kirk came from Oak Ridge and became UTC's all-time women's basketball leader with 2,376 career points and 1,086 rebounds, and she holds career and single-season program bests of 21.2 and 23.4 points a game as well as the single-game record of 45 points. A four-time All-Southern Conference selection and three-time SoCon all-tournament choice, she was in the second class of inductees to the conference's hall of fame.

Odom was all-state and honorable mention All-America after leading Riverside High School to a 30-5 record in 1975-76, and he was conference player of the year with a 26.2-point average at Claremont Junior College before going on to Oklahoma State and averaging 24.2 points as a senior -- still the Cowboys' single-season best. Odom was drafted in the fourth round by the NBA's San Diego Clippers in 1980.

Disterdick is a multisport athlete and former television commercials actor married to a former Miss America runner-up, but his greatest national achievements have been in boxing with Ringside World Masters titles as a light heavyweight in 2007-09 and as a heavyweight the last two years. He began boxing in 1965 as an Army officer stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

McCamish is a Chattanooga native and University of Chattanooga graduate who chaired the LPGA Championship from 1985 to '93 and the Senior PGA Tour Championship for five years before becoming president of Myrtle Beach-based Golf Holiday in 1997 and coordinating the mammoth DuPont World Amateur tournament, among other things. He now runs the Nationwide Tour's Children's Hospital Classic in his hometown.

Powell was a seven-time Amateur Softball Association All-American and two-time national-tournament most valuable player during the Provident Vets' remarkable run of state and national slowpitch championships in the 1970s and '80s. She played open-league softball for several years before joining the Vets in 1976 and playing in 13 ASA Women's Major Industrial nationals.

Windsor was one of a long line of Chattanooga pitching stars in the heyday of men's fastpitch softball. He pitched baseball for Kirkman High School before going into softball and moving up the ranks to the AA league with S&S Motors Volvos and Ruby Falls. He beat the world-champion Clearwater (Fla.) Bombers 1-0 in 1974 and threw two no-hitters in Ruby Falls' city-championship season of 1983.

Ferguson was an All-American swimmer at Baylor School and Sewanee, specializing in the butterfly stroke. He also was on a state-champion freestyle relay at Baylor, where he was on the 1973 state-champion football team. He was honored as the most outstanding athlete as a senior at both schools, and he was a four-year national qualifier at Sewanee and a member of its inaugural hall of fame class.

Cleveland resident Flowers had top-eight finishes in the YMCA nationals and later in the NCAA nationals for Tulane, where he was a four-time Metro Conference champion. He was Tulane's "athlete of the year" in 1983 and qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials in '84, but he became more widely known for his work with disabled swimmers and the Paralympic Games. After he died in 2009 as a result of a climbing accident in Colorado, the international disabled meet hosted annually in Colorado Springs was named the Jimi Flowers Classic.

Howard was another Tulane star, playing No. 1 singles from his sophomore through senior years and going 33-1 and making the U.S. Junior Davis Cup traveling squad. That was after four years of No. 1 singles and doubles at McCallie, where he returned and helped coach John Strang direct two state championship teams and the nation's No. 1 ranking in 1977. A competitive road cyclist who once ran a 2:38 marathon, he also is an attorney and a Presbyterian pastor of an inner-city church in Knoxville.

Webb was the captain of those 1976 and '77 McCallie state-title tennis teams and won TSSAA doubles titles both years. He won 10 state junior singles titles, 11 state junior doubles titles and two Georgia junior titles in singles and doubles and was selected to the Tennessee Junior Davis Cup team. He was Kentucky's tennis captain in 1980 and '81 and won two TVI men's doubles titles and a mixed doubles title and was an eight-time city champion in doubles and mixed doubles.

McMahan directed the Baylor girls' track and field program to the state relay championship in 1997 and overall state titles in 1998, '99 and 2008, '09 and '10 and the Baylor boys to state crowns in 2000 and '02. A 38-year faculty member, McMahan has been the track coach for 21 years with 11 girls' region titles, including the last four, and three boys' region championships with 11 runner-up finishes. He was the state track coach of the year for the 2009-10 season.

Roberson was captain of Howard's Negro state championship football team in 1959 and went on to play at Morehouse College, and he had years of success as a local junior high school coach in several sports before working at City High and Tyner High from 1972 to '87. He was a regional champion and coach of the year in basketball in 1979 and had years of success in track, with multiple second- and third-pace state finishes. He served as president of the city league's track coaches association.

Hill was a Georgia state wrestling champion in 1978, '79 and '80 for Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe and a 1981 Tennessee champion for East Ridge, when he was an AAU national Greco-Roman runner-up before embarking on his college career at Kentucky and UTC. He has been the head coach at Heritage High School since 2008, and his Generals were seeded first for the Georgia Class AAA duals tournament this weekend.

Logsdon was Bradley Central's first state wrestling champion, in 1984, a three-time state freestyle champion and UTC's captain in 1986. As Bradley's head coach from 1992 to 2004 and then 2007 to '11, he directed the Bears to nine traditional state championships and 11 TSSAA duals titles and went 382-26 with 16 high school All-Americans.

Millsaps began bowling in 1964 in the DuPont shift league and has bowled in multiple leagues since 1965. He has participated in tournaments throughout the United States with five state titles plus numerous city championships and has made 35 trips to the U.S. Bowling Congress Nationals. He has rolled 14 300 games and four 800 series in competition.

Goodwin played volleyball for Tyner High and Middle Tennessee State University and began officiating matches in 1974. A retired teacher with 32 years in the Bradley County school system, she has 12 years of experience as the assigner for the Chattanooga Area Volleyball Officials Association and is a state supervisor for the TSSAA, a National Federation volleyball committee member and a 36-year collegiate official.

Silberman was an all-city football and baseball player at Baylor and was a football official with the TSSAA before working Southern Conference games from 1977 to '84 and SEC games from '84 to 2001. He worked several Blue-Gray all-star games, a Sun Bowl and the first two SEC championship games.

Among many other assignments for the News-Free Press, McCarter covered the Lookouts beginning with their return in 1976, UTC basketball and football and then went to the Anniston (Ala.) Star as sports editor. After a series of high-profile public relations positions in the mid-1990s, he went to the Huntsville Times in 1998 and has been a national "Best Sports Columnist" finalist as well as Alabama's sportswriter and/or columnist of the year multiple times. He covered the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and serves as Alabama's state Heisman Trophy chairman.

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