Lynchburg Hall of Fame announces five new inductees

Five new inductees into the Lynchburg Area Sports Hall of Fame were announced Monday morning at the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Three of the five — David Read, John Scott and Billy Webb — were in attendance, while Cornell Brown was in Canada coaching the defending CFL champion Calgary Stampeders and Theodore “Specs” Garbee died in 1991.

The bi-annual Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony is scheduled for next Tuesday night at Randolph College, where for-mer San Francisco Giants pitcher Dave Dravecky will be the guest speaker.

Read, who started at forward as a sophomore, center as a junior and guard as a senior on E.C. Glass’ basketball team under Willie Taylor in the late 1970s, had a much more distinguished career in track and field, and still holds the Hilltoppers’ school records in the 60-, 100- and 200-meters.

He went on to compete at Vir-ginia Tech and qualified for the 1980 NCAA Division I track and field championships and Olympic Trials, though injuries and the U.S. boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow kept him from competing.

“I got to wear the United States uniform and compete against the Russian team in Cali-fornia as a member of the U.S. Junior National Team in 1979,” said Read, who placed third in the 100 and was a member of the world record-setting 400-meter relay team. “That was my biggest accomplishment.”

Read coached track and field at Tech, Glass and Appomattox, where he has served as vice principal for the past six years.

Scott, who was nominated by former Glass football coach Bo Henson, spearheaded a number of athletic programs and competitions. He started the wrestling program at Glass in 1970 and the Lynchburg Wrestling Officials’ Association in 1973, serving as a wrestling official to this day.

He later began the Heritage softball program in 1978 and in 1995 started the Heritage High School Invitational Golf Tournament, which traditionally opens the season in early August at London Downs.

Webb, 81, was another pio-neer, coaching the Rivermont football team at Ruffner School in Lynchburg at the age of 14 before being named the school’s Playground Director two years later. He later played semi-pro baseball for Brookneal in 1954 and coached little league sports for 32 years. He was nominated by fellow Glass graduates Dodd Harvey and Tommy Glass, weeks before Glass died.

Brown, a 1993 Glass graduate, is undoubtedly the most famous of the group. He played line-backer on two state championship teams with the Hilltoppers before going on to Virginia Tech, where he led the Hokies to two Big East titles, earning National Defensive player of the year honors in 1995, when he was also MVP of the Tech’s Sugar Bowl team. He was a linebacker and special teams player for seven seasons for the Baltimore Ravens, playing on the Super Bowl championship team in 2000, before coaching the defensive line for the Frankfort (Germany) Galaxy in NFL Europe from 2004 to 2006 and the Stampeders.

Garbee, the only member of this year’s class to be inducted posthumously, was born in 1908 in Amherst County and died in 1991 after a baseball career that spanned 25 years. He played for the semi-pro Craddock-Terry Cutters and Shoemakers and the Lynchburg Cardinals, before managing minor league teams in Johnson City, Tenn. (Appalachian League) and Allentown, Pa. (Interstate League).

Brookville fifth-year football coach Jeff Woody, who guided the Bees to the Group AA state championship game, was nomi-nated for the Vince Bradford Coach of the Year Award.

Woody, a record-setting re-ceiver at Brookville and Hampden-Sydney, said his father Len Woody played for Bradford at E.C. Glass in the 1960s.

“To win an award named after him is an honor,” Woody said.

Former Amherst football coach Scott Abell received the award in 2007.

Jefferson Forest’s Josh Storm and Heritage’s Monica Li were named the recipients of the Lynchburg Area Hall of Fame Scholar/Athlete of the Year Awards, earning $500 scholar-ships to go toward their college expenses.

Storm, who also received the inaugural Jim Worley Memorial Scholarship given to one male and one female student athlete last month, is one of four Jefferson Forest seniors headed to Randolph-Macon College in Ashland to continue his football career, as a placekicker. He earned 12 varsity letters, also playing basketball for three years before switching to indoor track and field this winter and started in center field for the Cavaliers’ baseball team, which lost to Alleghany in the Region III semifinal on Friday.

Li, the Pioneers’ goalkeeper in soccer for the past four seasons, was nominated as the “Play It Smart” female athlete of the month for January. She boasts a 4.3 GPA and plans to go to Virginia Tech.