Lowndes County announces Sports Hall of Fame in inaugural class
LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Plans to honor the sports legacy of Lowndes County take another step forward.
The Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame announced its inaugural class on January 9.
The ten honorees are Stan Black, Billy Brewer, Roosevelt Bridges, Carl Butler, Sam Fletcher, Leslie Frazier, Frank Griffin, Ronnie Richardson, Carey Shepherd, and Clarence Weatherspoon.
They represent a variety of sports, including football, basketball, baseball, softball, and swimming.
One common thread running through this class is coaching.
9 of the 10 have coached in some capacity.
One of them, Ronnie Richardson, has some advice for up-and-coming athletes.
“Be dedicated. Be disciplined. And be able to be coached. You know, you got to be able to be coached. I think these days, I have the opportunity to coach in different avenues of sports, a lot of times it’s the discipline. You know kids are great. They’re great athletes. They’re probably better athletes than we were, man, back then, but the thing about us, we learned to listen, and we learned to be coached, and we wanted to be coached. But we had great work ethics to get the job done,” Richardson.
“We opened it up to the public and asked them to nominate people and got about 40 nominations from the general public. And, of course, we had the information we had developed on our own, so the combination of who the public nominated and what we decided. This was a hard task because there are so many worthy people that were considered,” said LCSHOF Board President, Glenn Lautzenhiser.
The official induction will be at a banquet at Trotter Convention Center April 18.
Former NFL Player and current NFL coach, Leslie Frazier, and NBA veteran and Meridian Community College coach Clarence Weatherspoon will be the keynote speakers.
