A half-dozen men with ties to the Chattanooga wrestling community will be inducted tonight into the Tennessee chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Among those who will be honored at the banquet at the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club are a referee, an ex-referee, two coaches, a match-maker and a very special contributor.
"They've all earned their spots," observed Steve Henry, the longtime Soddy-Daisy coach who already is a member of the group. "This is a special group."
The inductees are Bryce Brye, David Heffington, Allan Jones, Ethan Reeve, Paul Schulz and Roger Vandergriff.
Brye was the expert when it came to tournament directing and match-making. He did it with paper and pencil long before computers were small enough to carry in one's backpack.
"He goes all the way back to the John Farr days (1960s). He was precise, meticulous and we all came to know him as Flash," Henry said.
Heffington wrestled at Bradley Central and then became one of the statewide recognized group of Chattanooga officials, a group that included Mike Craft, Charlie Goss, Kenny Mara, Farr and Tater Vineyard among others.
Allan Jones, Mr. Check-Into-Cash, was a state wrestling runner-up and football player for Cleveland and later became the first certified wrestling referee in Bradley County.
With Jones, though, the story goes much deeper. The wrestling center at Cleveland High bears his name, and he also contributed to the construction of the Bradley Central wrestling room. It is also well-known that he funded a statistical data tracker (weight management program) for high school programs in Tennessee and that he donated thousands to the University of Tennessee wrestling program.
Beyond the limelight, though, he has contributed thousands of dollars to start-up wrestling programs in the high school ranks, proving such as uniforms and mats.
Reeve was a four-time Southeastern Conference champ at Tennessee and the Volunteers' first wrestling All-American. He served as an assistant coach at UT, Oklahoma State and Clemson but is best known to Chattanoogans as the Mocs' coach from 1984 to 1990 when they won five Southern Conference titles.
Reeve was so much more, though, and should be considered as one who furthered Chattanooga's stature in Tennessee high school wrestling ranks.
"People in Tennessee, Florida and Georgia benefited from him and the people he coached," offered Danny Gilbert, who'll emcee tonight's event.
"He was a friend and adviser to a lot of coaches here, and he was never too busy to help anybody that asked," Henry added.
Vandergriff also was a successful coach and worked hard to enhance Chattanooga's wrestling reputation. He has coached at Soddy-Daisy and Hixson and over the years saw more than 50 of his wrestlers earn state medals, including current Hixson coach Garrick Hall.
One of the most deserving inductees is Schulz, who quietly went about promoting the sport through his duties as a sports writer for the Chattanooga News-Free Press. During more than 20 years of covering both high school wrestling and the UTC program, he received the Dellinger Award presented to the best national wrestling writer by Amateur Wrestling News.
It was at the Tennessee state tournament, though, that Schulz really made an impact. He was among the first nationally, if not the first, to computerize a state tournament, and he wrote an all-encompassing computer program to score, match-make and update brackets.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfree press.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.