Meet the 2019 Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame class

Nine men and three women have been elected to the 2019 Class of the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame.

The 12 new members will be formally inducted at the Hall of Fame’s annual induction banquet April 15, 2019, at the North Hall of the Von Braun Center. The 27th class of Hall of Fame encompasses a broad spectrum of the local landscape, featuring nine sports.

In alphabetical order, the class includes Linda Burgess (basketball), Randy Bunn (coaching), Chris George (ice hockey), John Kirk (coaching), David Moon (football), Teresa Lewis Orcutt (swimming and decathlon athlete), Horace Rice (tennis), Adolph Scissum (wrestling), Tracy Valenzuela (softball), Johnny Walker (baseball), Barry Williamson (track and field) and Richard Wilson (coaching).

Two other longtime Huntsville residents, Bill Homer and Doris McHugh, have been selected for Hall of Fame Special Achievement Awards.

The 2019 list of inductees includes three coaches:

• Randy Bunn, who now lives in retirement at Panama City Beach, Fla., was a teacher, trainer, coach, student activities director and head track coach for the varsity boys at Grissom High from 1988-2003. He was the Huntsville City Schools’ Track Coach of the Year 16 times and was the state’s Track and Field Coach of the Year in 2001. Bunn later served as athletic director and head boys and girls track coach at Paul Bryant High in Tuscaloosa (2003-05), a teacher at Riverchase High (2005-06) and head track coach and cross country coach at Pelham High (2005-09). A 1977 graduate of Jess Lanier High, he has an undergraduate degree from Alabama and an MS degree from Alabama A&M.

• John Kirk, a native of Tuscaloosa and an Alabama graduate, has been a part of the local sports scene since 1973 when he came to Butler High after first coaching for a year at Hazelwood High . He was an assistant coach in football, basketball and track at Butler from 1973-79 before moving across town to Huntsville High, where he was an assistant coach in football, baseball and basketball – and head girls track coach and assistant boys coach in track – for 10 years. Kirk was the state’s Track Coach of the Year in 1988 and 1999, when HHS won the state title. He later coached the offensive and defensive lines at Grissom High, and also coached fullbacks and linebackers for the Tennessee Valley Vipers Arena2 team from 2000-2003. He’s now an assistant football coach at Giles County High in Tennessee.

• Richard Wilson is a throwback to an almost forgotten era when high school coaches volunteered their services not for monetary rewards but for the love of the game and devotion to the student-athletes under their supervision. The younger brother of Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Famer Rock Wilson (inducted in 2005), Wilson has voluntarily coached the boys and girls tennis teams at his alma mater, Lee High in Huntsville, for the past quarter-century. Almost all his players were recruited from the student body in general without having the benefit of a background in tennis. In 2018, his mostly inexperienced boys team advanced to the AHSAA state tournament for the first time in school history. A graduate of Lee and UNA, Wilson is also the kicking coach at Alabama A&M.

The athletes are represented by the following:

• Linda Burgess is a 1988 graduate of Bob Jones High who went from the star of her high school basketball team to a bigger star at Calhoun Community College to an even bigger star at the University of Alabama, and finally to the pinnacle of women’s basketball – the WNBA. She also played volleyball and softball in high school, but basketball was always her centerpiece sport. As an All-State senior at Bob Jones in 1987-88, she averaged more than 30 points a game and 20 rebounds. She became a two-time All-American at Calhoun, setting several school records, and at Alabama she averaged 20 points a game and was named All-SEC as a junior and senior. She then played professionally in Switzerland and Israel and later played four years in the WNBA. Burgess is now a teacher at Central High in Macon, Georgia.

• Chris George, one of Huntsville’s most popular professional hockey players over the past two decades, grew up in the Canada’s most populous province of Ontario, played hockey, lacrosse and football in high school at Eastwood Collegiate Institute and developed into an outstanding hockey player at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, where he became a high-scoring three-year letterman. George began playing pro hockey in 1994 with the Tallahassee Tiger Sharks, then played two years for the Columbus Cottonmouths before coming to the Huntsville Channel Cats, where he played from 1997-2000 and then for the Huntsville Tornado and later the Huntsville Havoc. He had two 100-point seasons in Huntsville. George and his former TV anchor wife, Amy, founded the Melissa George Neonatal Memorial Fund at Huntsville Hospital.
• David Moon, who was born in Decatur but grew up in the Huntsville area, was a standout football lineman on both sides of the ball at Hazel Green High in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. A first-team All-State offensive tackle in 1980, Moon played in the AHSAA All-Star game and turned down offers from a number of schools, including Alabama and Auburn, to sign with coach Johnny Majors at Tennessee. At 6-foot-5 and 270 pounds, Moon enjoyed an imposing sophomore season before his career was slowed by two ACL surgeries. He nevertheless played in four bowl games for the Vols. In 1985, he received the Herman Hickman Award and was named UT’s Top Senior Male Student-Athlete. He is the founder and chairman of Moon Capital Management, one of Knoxville’s premier businesses.
• Teresa Lewis Orcutt may have been the most versatile athlete in this year’s class during her prime. At Huntsville’s Randolph School in 1980-81, she was a state champion and an All-American in swimming, a state champion runner in cross country and a member of the state championship team in track and field. At Tulane University, she was a three-time All-American swimmer from 1982-85 and set school records in the 200, 500, 2000 and 1650 freestyles. After college, she was a member of the Modern Pentathlon World Team in 1987-93 and 1995, was a silver medalist in the Pentathlon in 1989 and was the pentathlon national champion three years later, and was the fencing national champion in 1995. She served in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a Lt. Col. In 2013. She is married to a Brigadier General, Daniel Orcutt, stationed at Tyndall AFB in Florida.

• Horace Rice is widely regarded as the second finest African-American tennis player the city of Huntsville ever produced, trailing only former professional Bryan Shelton, who was inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006. Rice, a graduate of Councill High and Alabama A&M, was a top junior player in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, winning his first adult tournament as a high school senior. From 1975-2005, he was among the top-ranked players in Alabama from the 35-under to 65-under age groups. From 1978-2010, he won numerous singles, doubles and mixed doubles trophies in Huntsville and six other Alabama cities, and has won several gold medals in the Alabama Senior Olympics. Now 74, Rice is retired from the Alabama A&M faculty, where he taught business law and ethics.
• Adolph Scissum joins his brother Willard, who was inducted into the local Hall of Fame in 2007 after a celebrated football career at Lee High, Alabama and the NFL. Adolph, who is now the Director of Campus Services at Alabama A&M, also played football at Lee but he was known primarily for his skills as a wrestler. He wrestled first at Chapman and later at Lee, where his record was 73-7-2. He was the state high school runner-up at 185 pounds in 1977 and was the heavyweight state champion his senior year in 1978. Offered appointments to West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, he chose Navy, where he became a three-year varsity wrestling letterman from 1980-82. After his military career, he returned to Huntsville and eventually started his own company before accepting a job at Alabama A&M.
• Tracy Valenzuela was one of the first great women athletes at UAH. A 1994 graduate of J.O. Johnson High, she was signed to a scholarship by UAH coach Les Stuedeman to be a member of the school’s inaugural softball team in 1996 and immediately helped establish a standard of excellence for Charger softball that still endures more than 20 years later. She played on UAH teams that won conference championships in 1996 and 1998 and won the NCAA South Region championship in 1999. She was an NFCA All-American in 1999 while finishing second in the conference record book in season batting average (.478) and sixth in slugging percentage (.859). A resident of Owens Cross Roads, Valenzuela is a certified registered nurse practitioner in Huntsville.
• Johnny Walker was born at Huntsville Hospital in 1960, played basketball and football for coach Ben Berry at Huntsville Middle and then went on to Lee High, where he played football for coach John Childress, basketball for coach Jerry Dugan and baseball for coach John Dudley from 1976-79. He initially signed with UNA to play baseball and football but opted instead to sign with Chipola Junior College for baseball. He signed with Alabama in 1982 but missed the season due to an injury and transferred to Troy State, where he played two years for famed coach Chase Riddle. Walker was named the MVP in the 1984 NCAA regional on a team that finished third in the nation in the Division II National tournament in Los Angeles. He later coached high school baseball in Clearwater, Florida, and is now retired.
• Barry Williamson excelled in football, wrestling and track in high school at Grissom in the mid-1990s, but he’s remembered most for his achievements in track. As a senior, he was All-City in the pole vault, 110 high hurdles and 300 hurdles, placed second in the 330 hurdles, high-jumped 7-feet, 10-inches and won the 4x100 with his team. In the City Meet, he won the Jimmy Bailey High Point Score award, and in the Alabama State decathlon, he placed fifth and set the pole vault record for the state. Awarded a scholarship by UAB, he lettered in track as a freshman and was the only Blazer men’s athlete to compete in the Penn Relays. Barry, son of former Grissom track coach Adam Williamson, then transferred to Auburn and became a four-year track letterman. He’s still considered one of the Tigers’ best all-time indoor and outdoor vaulters.

The Special Achievement Award honorees:

• Bill Homer, now 85, has been a resident of Huntsville for nearly 60 years. For much of that time, he was an unsung friend and mentor to thousands of youth in both Huntsville and Madison County. He never sought the spotlight or public praise, but Homer’s career accomplishments left a lasting legacy, although he often had to work on a shoestring budget. Homer grew up in west Alabama and later moved with his family to Florence, where he attended college. He moved to Huntsville in 1960 to coach basketball at New Market Junior High and Buckhorn High. In 1963, he was hired by the Rural YMCA and remained in that job for the next 32 years, eventually succeeding the late Buttermilk Johnson as Rural Director. He then worked 18 years for the Huntsville Parks and Recreation Department before retiring in 2014.

• Doris McHugh, a 1955 graduate of the University of Alabama, was born in 1934 in Pickens County. A career educator, she taught elementary school in Tuscaloosa and then in Colorado and Louisiana before coming to the Huntsville City Schools in 1960. She established the city’s first formal Physical Education program for elementary students in 1971, hiring and training the personnel and writing the curriculum. Partly in recognition of those efforts, she received the Governors Award for Physical Fitness. A year earlier, she implemented Special Olympics for the city. She also established the city’s “Female Athlete of the Year’’ award in 1993. The same year, she was named one of the University of Alabama’s Top 31 female graduates of the past 100 years and was also named the state’s Volunteer of the Year for Retarded Citizens.