The Glynn County Sports Hall of Fame is pleased to announce the release of its tribute video on Risley High School and the success in athletics by the Tigers.
The Salute to the Tigers video is posted down below. You can also click here to watch the video on YouTube.
The video is also available on the Hall of Fame’s Facebook page.
The Hall of Fame celebrated the success of Risley athletics at its recent Induction Banquet to honor the Class of 2020. The 2020 induction was originally scheduled for last March but had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Hall also planned to honor Risley last March as well, and thus included the celebration in its recent ceremony which took place on July 30 at the Jekyll Island Convention Center.
This celebration stemmed from the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors deciding a few years back to recognize all the state championship teams from the local high schools including Brunswick High, Glynn Academy, Frederica Academy and the old Risley High School which is no longer in existence.
The state champions are now listed on the Hall’s public display in the Athletic Center at Glynn County Stadium along with the members of each Hall of Fame induction class dating back to the first one in 2012.
The Hall of Fame also wanted to recognize these state championship teams at future banquets and chose to celebrate each school’s athletics history, which includes these championship teams, at separate banquets in the years ahead.
The Hall of Fame Board opted to start by celebrating the Risley Tigers who won 12 state championships during the school’s existence.
Clyde Williams, who won state titles in basketball as a player and coach for the Tigers, was among the six inductees in the 2020 Hall of Fame class.
Prior to the formal induction ceremony, the Hall of Fame paid tribute to Risley with its celebration that featured a video presentation detailing the history of the school and its athletics teams.
Hall of Fame president Kevin Price wrote the story about the Tigers which he also narrated for the video. The video presentation was produced by Dale Leonard of Dale Leonard Productions.
Price researched the history of Risley’s athletics, largely using an archive put together by school historian Carl Norris who was especially passionate about Risley’s athletic teams.
The video includes newspaper clippings with references to Risley triumphs in headlines, numerous photos and video images as well as audio clips taken from on-camera interviews with Risley alumni who volunteered to help tell the story of the Tigers.
Among those interviewed for the presentation were Otheler Speakman, a former Risley football standout and coach; William Buck Crosby, a Risley basketball standout who returned to teach at the school; Carl Brown, who helped the Tigers win the 1950 football state crown; Hugh Way, who played football for the Tigers under legendary coach Stan Lomax; Essie Sheffield, a former athlete and coach at the school; and Rayfield Barneman, a standout on the 1969 state championship basketball team.
The Risley tribute was well-received by members of the school’s alumni association who were in attendance at the banquet along with others who were in the audience as well, according to Price.
“We have gotten a lot of positive feedback about the video and the whole Risley celebration,” Price noted. “Our goal was to honor Risley and its great success in athletics, of course. But, we also wanted to get all this history documented in one piece which our video pretty well accomplishes. At the same time, we hoped it would be educational for some of those who may not have been as familiar with the Risley story as those who were around as it occurred.
“We wanted to celebrate Risley at our banquet and play the video there first, but we’re excited about sharing it with our community and those living elsewhere who also may want to take a stroll down memory lane and enjoy going back and reliving those championships won by those great Risley teams.
“It was a pleasure to work on this project, and we certainly appreciate the cooperation and help we got from the Risley Alumni Association, their president Deborah Thomas, and all those who sat down for interviews with us.
“We hope people will take the time to watch the video and we hope they have as much fun watching it as we did putting it together.”