Longtime HBCU athletic director gets Hall of Fame Induction

Courtesy of Benedict School Athletics

ATLANTA, Ga. – HBCU Benedict School long-time Director of Athletics Willie Washington will probably be enshrined within the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Convention (SIAC) Corridor of Fame on July 10 on the School Soccer Corridor of Fame in Atlanta, together with the SIAC Soccer Media Day.

Washington has guided Benedict School athletics for 36 years, together with 10 years in a twin function of head males’s basketball coach and athletic director. Throughout his illustrious HBCU profession, Benedict School has gained the distinguished SIAC Commissioner’s Cup, introduced to the highest athletic males’s and girls’s program within the convention, greater than another faculty within the league. Benedict School swept each the boys’s and girls’s trophies 4 occasions at school historical past. All informed, Benedict has gained 10 of the 18 trophies for the reason that inception of the Commissioner’s Cup award in 2014, together with successful the boys’s trophy for the 2023-24 faculty yr.

Throughout his tenure, the South Carolina HBCU expanded its athletic program from eight to 14 sports activities, together with the return of soccer, and noticed Benedict rejoin the SIAC after years of success within the NAIA’s Jap Intercollegiate Athletic Convention. He was named the NAIA Southeast Area Athletic Director of the Yr in 1999.

Throughout his lengthy HBCU profession, Benedict groups have captured 50 SIAC championships – eight in girls’s basketball, six in girls’s monitor and area, six in males’s tennis, 5 in males’s basketball, 5 in males’s cross nation, 5 in girls’s tennis, 4 in males’s monitor and area, 4 in cheerleading, three in girls’s cross nation, two in soccer, one in softball, and one in males’s golf.

“Your contributions to the success of Benedict School Athletics for over 30 years are legendary,” wrote SIAC Commissioner Anthony Holloman in a congratulatory letter. “For most individuals, that may have been sufficient, nevertheless, I need to commend you in your work as a mentor, public servant and function mannequin for hundreds of younger males.”

“I couldn’t be extra pleased with Coach Willie Washington on this well-deserved acknowledgment of his distinguished profession as a mentor, coach, and an athletic administrator. Induction to the Corridor of Fame is a becoming tribute to his almost 40-year profession,” stated Benedict School President and CEO Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis.

HBCU Benedict College SIAC Willie Washington Hall of Fame

“Along with a confirmed report of cultivating and growing successful athletic packages, I’ve discovered him to be a frontrunner who’s dedicated to excellence,” wrote Dr. David H. Swinton, President Emeritus of Benedict School, in his nomination letter of advice. “He additionally evokes greatness in those that work with him, and most significantly, within the student-athletes who’re a part of the athletic program at Benedict School.”

Greater than the rest, Mr. Washington is somebody with nice integrity and character,” wrote Dr. Derrick Johnson, Affiliate Dean of Athletics at Fresno (Calif.) Metropolis School, and a former Benedict coach and athletic administrator. “As a profound chief, he has at all times been capable of get the very best from his workers and colleagues. I’ve labored with Mr. Washington on a number of tasks, and I’ve witnessed his skilled strategy on humanitarian points and injustices that impression the general college students on the School. I’ve witnessed Coach Washington make the most of his platform to fight starvation, homelessness, violence, and social injustices which have impacted the neighborhood in Columbia, S.C.”

“Coach Washington has at all times labored very arduous to encourage greatness in those that work with him, and most significantly, within the student-athletes who’re a part of the athletic program at Benedict School. Coach Washington has been a pillar of management and excellence inside the Benedict School athletic neighborhood,” wrote Verna C. Mayers-Fakunle, CEO of Impressed Methods, LLC, who stated Mr. Washington has been an “integral a part of my life as an employer, mentor, colleague, and pal for over twenty-six years.”

Willie Washington arrived on the campus of Benedict School in 1988 as the pinnacle males’s basketball coach and athletic director and took the Tigers to instant success. He guided the Tigers to the NAIA nationwide event 4 occasions, 9 convention championships, and eight consecutive EIAC Coach of the Yr Awards. Throughout his tenure as basketball coach, his groups by no means had a shedding season. The Benedict athletic program gained six EIAC Commissioner Cups, the hallmark of excellence for the varsity with the very best athletic program throughout its keep within the EIAC.

Along with the athletic success of the Benedict groups underneath Washington’s management, he additionally focuses on the general well-being of the student-athletes. Underneath Washington’s management, the general grade level common of your entire student-athlete inhabitants has elevated to over a 3.0 on a constant foundation, and Benedict had its first two Tutorial All-People in 2015, a 3rd in 2017, and one other in 2023. He has additionally been instrumental in Benedict receiving grants from the NCAA to assist student-athletes full their levels, in addition to a Decisions Grant to assist with alcohol schooling. In 2020, he spearheaded two profitable NCAA grant functions so as to add an Tutorial Counselor and Assistant Monitor & Area Coach to the athletic workers. In 2010, the athletic division gained the NCAA Division II Nationwide Group Engagement Award of ExcIellence.

Mr. Washington has served, or presently serves, on a lot of athletic committees, boards and foundations. Washington served on the NCAA Division II Males’s Basketball Committee, and is a former member of the NCAA Division II Administration Council, Chairman of the SIAC Athletic Administrators Committee, the NCAA Honors Committee, and the NCAA Range and Inclusion Committee. In recognition to his devoted service within the development of youth in his neighborhood, the S.C. State Convention of the NAACP awarded Mr. Washington the Presidential Quotation Civic Management Award in 2012. Washington additionally serves because the Chairman of the Board of the Laurinburg Institute, a historic African American preparatory faculty in Laurinburg, North Carolina.

Along with the SIAC Corridor of Fame, Willie Washington has beforehand been inducted into the Laurinburg Corridor of Fame in 2016, and the Finney Corridor of Fame by the Renaissance Basis in 2018. He’s additionally a member of the Allen College Athletic Corridor of Fame, the Benedict School Athletic Corridor of Fame, and the EIAC Corridor of Fame.

He’s a 1974 graduate of HBCU Tougaloo School, the place he was a member of the boys’s basketball group, and lately celebrated his golden anniversary. He obtained his undergraduate diploma in Well being, Bodily Training and Recreation, and earned a Grasp’s Diploma in Well being and Bodily Training from Jackson State College.

The SIAC Corridor of Fame ceremony will happen at 11 a.m. on July 10 within the School Soccer Corridor of Fame. The SIAC Corridor of Fame is steeped in HBCU custom with the likes of NFL Corridor of Famers Shannon Sharpe and John Stallworth, Olympic gold medalist Alice Coachman, and Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame Coach John Chaney, who’ve been honored in earlier lessons. He turns into the second Benedict consultant within the SIAC Corridor of Fame, becoming a member of Benedict School graduate and former chair of the United State Olympic Committee Dr. Leroy Walker, whom Washington considers a mentor.

Together with Willie Washington, the 2024 SIAC Corridor of Fame class contains: Kimberly Duggar (Fort Valley State), Frank Walker (Tuskegee), Harold Hubbard (Savannah State), Jacoby Jones (Lane), Mabel Sanders (Savannah State), and William King (Tuskegee).