A trio of outstanding athletes – a pair of UTC alums and a current Duke football star – will be recognized as “Athletes of the Year” at the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame dinner to be held March 2 at the Chattanooga Convention Center.
Former Southern Conference Female Basketball Player of the Year Taylor Hall is the female honoree, while UTC football All-American Davis Tull and Duke star David Helton, a recent recipient of “Academic Heisman” will share the men’s honor.
* Tickets: The banquet starts at 6:30 p.m.
and tickets for $35 can be purchased by contacting Catherine Neely (842-7274). Tables seating eight can be reserved for $280.
Other special honorees will be the late Mary Gene Roberson with the Betty Probasco Award and Doug Dennett and Bruce Brye with the Walt Lauter Award for lifetime achievement or service in area athletics and William Nelson Jr. and Austin Roden with the Jim Morgan/Allan Morris Award for dealing with adversity.
The late Ron Bishop already has been revealed as the recipient of the organization’s top award, in memory of Fred Gregg Jr. The class of hall inductees will be announced soon.
Hall was the 2014 Southern Conference women’s basketball player of the year, defensive player of the year, tournament most outstanding player and ultimately the league’s overall female athlete of the year after her 2013-14 senior season in which she was UTC’s leader and one of the SoCon leaders in scoring, rebounding, assists, steals and free-throw percentage. She had 12 games of double-figure points and rebounds that season.
As football seniors in 2014, Helton and Tull were multiple-year stars who went out with a bang.
Tull completed his UTC career this past season as a three-time Southern Conference defensive player of the year and first-team FCS All-American, and he broke the league record for career sacks. He’s also an Academic All-American, but he said his greatest accomplishment was helping the Mocs have their first 10-win season, 7-0 league record and national quarterfinal appearance.
Helton was all-state in football and a state wrestling champion at Baylor School before going to Duke and helping in that program’s turnaround under coach David Cutcliffe, with three consecutive bowl appearances for the first time in Blue Devils history and 26 wins in three seasons for the first time. He led the Atlantic Coast Conference in tackles the last two seasons and was first-team All-ACC in 2014, and he was voted the league’s top senior scholar-athlete before winning the William V. Campbell Trophy as the nation’s top scholar-athlete.
Roberson joined her husband of 72 years, Blake, in passionate support of athletics in Bledsoe County. She played basketball at Bledsoe County High School and Martin Methodist College, and she coached Lusk Elementary School to a 130-game winning streak before becoming the first female coach at her high school alma mater, where her teams won two district championships. She played and coached in recreational softball and basketball leagues until her late 50s and also won Senior Olympics awards in both sports.
Brye lettered in football, wrestling and track and field in high school in Iowa and was the NAIA wrestling heavyweight national runner-up in 1958 and 1959 at Wartburg College. A longtime water quality specialist for TVA, he provided wrestling tips at Red Bank and other area high schools and then was Red Bank’s team scorekeeper for about 30 years and became involved in administration of local tournaments at multiple levels of the sport.
Dennett, who reached the rank of captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, is a former TSSAA sports official of the year who gave much of his time and energy for three decades to helping area cross country and track teams and for 25 years to the Chattanooga Area Swim League. He received an “Award of Excellence” from McCallie School in 1991 for his contributions to cross country and an award from exemplary service in 1994 from area track coaches, and he received the TSSAA’s A.F. Bridges award for 2011-12.
Nelson didn’t let having no fingers on his left hand stop him from being a key basketball player — and two-time team captain — for Hixson High School, after beginning AAU play as a seventh-grader. He’s volunteered at the Glenwood recreation center since 2001 “to help other youth.”
“Some doubted my ability to play because of the physical disability with my hand,” he said in a response to the Hall of Fame’s decision to honor him. “I do not consider myself as having a disability. I consider it an opportunity to prove that whatever you put your mind to do, it is possible.”
Roden has faced adversity of a different sort, undergoing intensive chemotherapy for brain tumors while helping coach the East Ridge High School football team this past fall. He also has worked with New York-based marketing company Saxon/Hart on a social media campaign against cancer.
A middle school MVP quarterback who became a standout wide receiver in high school, Roden also played golf, basketball and soccer in his school years and said, “Just being able to play any sport is an accomplishment.”