Georgia Celebrates Black History
2024 Stories
Making An Impact In And Out Of The Water
During his four years swimming at Howard University, Miles Simon was regularly competing with and against swimmers that looked like him. The same was true during his days training with the City of Atlanta Dolphins club as a young swimmer.
Edwards, Fleming Captured Gold In Los Angeles
For Vern Fleming, it was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience. For Teresa Edwards, it was an incredible, just-getting-started experience.
In late July, it will be 40 years since Fleming and Edwards, two of Georgia men's and women's basketball's all-time greats, suited up for the United States in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
2023 Stories
Grimes Made His Mark In Academics, Medicine
Long before Dr. Randall Grimes was a successful medical professional with about as impressive an education and résumé as you'll ever see, he was a young, walk-on butterfly swimmer for the Georgia men's team.
Harris Definitely Made An Impact
Janet Harris was willing to follow her instincts and head south. It was one of the best decisions the 2015 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame inductee ever made.
2022 Stories
Mitchell Thriving In ‘New World’ After Football
Malcolm Mitchell doesn't play football anymore. Injuries forced the former Georgia wide receiver, who won a Super Bowl in his rookie season with the New England Patriots, to retire from the game almost three full years ago. He was just 25 years old when he hung up his helmet and pads for good.
Smith Gilbert Leading By Example
Caryl Smith Gilbert is a worker, driven and determined to get the most out of every single day. She knows this, and she knows that others know it too.
‘One Of The Best Experiences Of My Life’
Corrinne Wright Tarver got into gymnastics because of her older sister, who first showed an interest in the sport after being a cheerleader. It was one of the best decisions she ever made.
Talent And Drive Elevated Wilkins At Georgia
He soared and he scored. He attacked the rim with power, perhaps never-before-seen power, yet also possessed a shooter's touch. Georgia men's basketball legend Dominique Wilkins was, quite simply, extraordinary.
‘I Loved Playing For Georgia’
Natalie Frazier Jenkins didn't come to Georgia to be a pioneer or trailblazer. She was an elite player from the Atlanta area and one of the top programs in all of women's college tennis happened to be about 75 miles away in Athens. It turned out to be a perfect fit.
2021 Stories
'He Was Just A Perfect Fit'
Hornsby Howell spent his life helping people be their best in the present while also preparing them for the future. Whether it was his children, his N.C. A&T Aggies or his Georgia Bulldogs, Howell was dedicated to education and building the tools needed to prosper in all aspects of life.
Past & Present: Carter, Stinson Have Shared Experience
Where Steve Carter has been, Josh Stinson would like to go: the big leagues. Where Stinson is now, as an African American on the Georgia baseball team, Carter was more than 30 years ago.
Recently, Carter and Stinson participated in a Zoom meeting, sharing their stories and experiences in baseball, as Bulldogs, and beyond.
Torrence Made Her Dreams Come True
Gwen Torrence didn't come to the University of Georgia dreaming of NCAA titles, Olympic glory and being the fastest sprinter in the world. In fact, she wasn't interested in going to college at all.
"The Olympics are what people dream of, and that wasn't my dream," she said. "I wanted to be a hairstylist and go to cosmetology school."
House Is Making Community Stronger
The idea began with a spark during a small Zoom gathering last fall.
Georgia volleyball players Kaylah House and Phoebe Awoleye were having a video chat with Darrice Griffin, then Georgia's Deputy Athletic Director for Administration and now the Senior Deputy Director of Athletics. The three African-American women were talking and sharing and connecting, and it felt good to do so.
2020 Stories
An ‘Impactful Experience’ Then And Now
Chuck Kinnebrew leaned in Tuesday afternoon, elbows on his knees and eyes up at his audience, and said it all in a nutshell: 50 years ago, when Kinnebrew and four other bold and pioneering African-American young men signed on to join the Georgia football team, they were paving the very path they'd have to traverse.
Seated at the front of Georgia's team meeting room were Kinnebrew, Horace King, Larry West and Clarence Pope, four of the first five African-American football players at Georgia. The only man absent was their teammate Richard Appleby, an Athens native and Clarke Central High School graduate like King and Pope, who now lives in Hawaii.
The four men were speaking that afternoon to the football team's leadership group, young African-American men whose world on and off the field is in so many ways much different from what King, West, Kinnebrew, Pope and Appleby experienced when they arrived on campus in 1971.
"We didn't have anybody to talk to us the way we're here talking to you," Kinnebrew said.
Talking with the players for about 30 minutes, the four pioneers discussed some of their experiences integrating the football program. There were challenges, they said, but they knew how important it was that they succeed in the classroom as well as on the field.
"If we didn't do it, we would have proved a lot of people right that didn't think we could do it," West said.
You're Going To Make It
The pivotal moments in life, the conversations that can change everything, often come during the simplest of occasions. No appointment necessary.
Hey, Coach, you got a minute? Of course, come on in.
Back in 1984, Georgia sophomore Teresa Edwards was one of the best college basketball players in the country, an All-American, and the 5-foot-11 guard was invited to try out for the U.S. Women's National Team that would be competing in the Olympics that summer in Los Angeles. The U.S. squad, led by superstar Cheryl Miller and coached by Pat Summitt, figured to be a very deep and talented bunch.
How deep and talented? So much so, at least in Edwards' estimation, that she decided that she wasn't going to attend the tryout. The guard from Cairo, Ga., who would go on to play for the U.S. squad in a record five Olympics and win four gold medals and one bronze — Edwards' Olympic record is 31-1 — her brilliant international career hit a speed bump before it even began.
She just needed to tell her coach, Andy Landers.
"I think about that talk and I use that talk as a motivational tool on almost every occasion I speak to kids because it was the one time in life that there was a fear of failure," Edwards said. "And I didn't know, I didn't know that's what I was feeling right then."
"She came to me about a week or so before the Olympic trials and she said, I don't think I'm going to go," said Landers, who was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, three years ahead of Edwards' induction in 2010.
She Went And Did It
It has been a few decades now since Andy Landers went into the LaGrange, Ga., home of a high school recruit named Carla Green and made a very candid, important pitch. It was an honest and effective approach, one that has made such a big difference for so many people.
Landers' Georgia women's basketball team was fresh off Final Four appearances in 1983 and 1985, led by two future Hall of Famers in guard Teresa Edwards and forward Katrina McClain, and Green, a smart and savvy guard, was one of the best players in the state as a senior at LaGrange High School.
In Landers' estimation, Green — whom we now all know as Dr. Carla Green Williams, the former great Georgia player and administrator and since 2017 the director of athletics at the University of Virginia — was the second-best player in the state that year. Williams, as we'll call her from now on, agreed with that assessment.
A self-described "gym rat from the time I was 8 years old," Williams said that she wasn't as naturally talented as some other players. "I probably had to work extra hard to compete." And that's what she did, without hesitation.
The best player in the state that year wanted to come to Georgia, Landers said, the memories as fresh during a recent interview as they were back in 1985, but Landers wanted Williams. She was a really good player and still had a ton of room for improvement, he said.
His pitch, as he recalls it, started something like this:
"I remember this just as plain as yesterday. Her mom, dad, me, and one of the first things I said to her was, 'I want you to come to Georgia but you need to understand something.' She said, 'What?' I said, 'If you come you're not going to play your first two years.'"
‘Every Day Is A Blessing’
By John Frierson - Staff Writer
Maya Caldwell aims to the best at whatever she’s doing. She works at it, she believes in it and the Georgia women’s basketball junior is going to give it everything she’s got to reach her goals. But Caldwell’s focus isn’t just on herself. She wants you to be at your best, too.
“Even within the team,” coach Joni Taylor said, “if Maya’s having a bad day you’re never going to know it. Her thing is: I make people laugh, I need to be happy to make other people happy, because if they’re having a bad day maybe I can be the one to turn it around.
“She is constantly putting her feelings to the side or making sure she shows up every day with energy.”
Each week in February, in honor of Black History Month, we will be taking a look at a past or present Georgia Bulldog or group of Bulldogs. This week it’s Caldwell, who enters Thursday night’s game against Missouri second on the team in scoring at 10.0 points per game, while also grabbing 3.4 rebounds a night.
But this story isn’t about Caldwell the player, though the things that make her a good person and citizen also make her a good teammate.
