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An official induction ceremony held Saturday, Sept. 14, at Central Middle School featured seven deserving individuals being ushered into the Randolph-Henry High School Athletic Hall of Fame with great esteem thanks to a well-organized event designed to put them and their achievements in a special spotlight.

“I thought it was terrific,” Randolph-Henry Director of Athletics and Assistant Principal Christopher D. Holt said of the ceremony, an event he helped plan along with Sept. 13’s social time and inductee recognition at halftime of the varsity football game. “I really look forward to it, because it’s a year-long process that begins, for instance, for the 2020 class, we’ll begin having committee meetings as early as (October), beginning to look at nominations and having discussions about the nominees and things of that nature. And it all kind of builds up and comes to fruition that Hall of Fame Weekend, and yeah, so I take a tremendous amount of pride in trying to make sure that when those inductees and their presenters and their guests and their family members come back, that they feel special and they feel truly remembered in a way that’s significant.”

The seven inductees this year included athlete Amanda Jennings-Carter, coach Billy Catron, athlete Willie J. “Chip” Childress, athlete Edward Harding, athlete Rhonda Jenkins-Agnew, athlete Robert Pugh and contributor Gary Walker.

“Each inductee had someone that they chose to present them, and that occurred, and then the inductee spoke,” Holt said, describing the induction ceremony, which was preceded by a catered brunch. “Each of the seven inductees had family and friends that had come in, so yeah, it was a special weekend.”

Holt said a weekend like that involves many people working together.

“Rhonda Benn is truly a master of decor and just planning for these events and taking care of decorations for these events and the food for these events,” he said. “It’s just a lot of moving parts, and she coordinates a lot of that in a very tasteful way that gives it a great feel as well.”

Having established a good base line with the first two years of the hall of fame festivities, Holt said it is now a matter of tweaking things, year to year, in order to improve them.

“Another neat thing is each year that we have previous inductees, I always send them two tickets for the current year so they’ll come back, and we probably had 10 inductees from the inaugural class return for this year to be a part of the 2019 celebration,” Holt said.