The Paris-Henry County Sports Hall of Fame ~ Press Release March 2007

The Paris-Henry County Sports Hall of Fame
will hold its 12th Annual Banquet at
Paris Convention Center (Hampton Inn)
Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 6:30 p.m.

Five new inductees plus the Distinguished Service award will be presented to the following:

Doug Barner

Jerry Brannon

Earl Mann (Deceased)

Vayden Waddy (Deceased)

Virgil Wall

The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to:

Tommy Priddy

_____________________________

Five picked for inclusion in sports hall

Five of the biggest names in local sports history will become bigger when they are enshrined into the Paris-Henry County Sports Hall of Fame during a banquet at 7 p.m. April 14 at the Paris Convention Center on East Wood Street.

The 2007 class of inductees to the P-HC Sports Hall of Fame includes: Doug Barner, Jerry Brannon, Virgil Wall, the late Earl Mann and the late Vayden Waddy. The Hall of Fame Committee is honoring Post-Intelligencer sports editor Tommy Priddy with the Distinguished Service Award at the banquet.

Tickets for the Hall of Fame banquet are on sale for $25 each. They can be purchased at: Paris Insurance Agency, 203 W. Wood St.; William T. Looney’s law office, 127 N. Poplar St.; or at Medical Center Pharmacy, 234 Tyson Ave., all in Paris.

Barner played baseball and football at Henry County High School in the early 1990s. He played baseball at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro for four years before enjoying a brief minor league baseball career that ended in 1998.

Brannon was a star in basketball, baseball and track at Puryear High School in the early 1950s. He played basketball for four years at David Lipscomb College in Nashville and later had a successful coaching career in Middle Tennessee.

Mann was an offensive and defensive stalwart at Grove High School in the 1940s. He played in college at both Bethel College in McKenzie and Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville, Miss.

Waddy starred in both basketball and football at Grove in the 1940s, including being named the football team’s Most Valuable Player in 1943. He played in college at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

Wall played football and ran track at Grove in the mid-1940s. He attended Pearl River Junior College and Bethel College. After college, he coached girls’ and boys’ basketball at Buchanan High School. He is a past chairman of the Paris-Henry County Sports Hall of Fame committee.

Reprinted from the Paris Post-Intelligencer
March 12, 2007 ~ Edition ~ Used by permission