Roane State Community College

The inaugural class for the Roane State Athletics Hall of Fame included coaches Andy Landers and Jim Davis and the 1984 national champion women’s basketball team.

May 3, 2019

By Bob Fowler
Roane State staff writer

HARRIMAN – Friendships were renewed, memories rekindled and athletes and their coaches honored during the Inaugural Roane State Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in May.

The event occurred between three graduation ceremonies for nearly 1,200 students and was highlighted by the unveiling of the new Hall of Fame plaque in the mezzanine of the Roane State gymnasium.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame, which will grow annually with new inductees, were Andy Landers, who coached the Roane State women’s basketball team from 1975 through 1979 and started his coaching duties when he was 22 years old; Jim Davis, coach of the Raiderettes from 1979-1985; and members of Davis’s 1984 national championship team.

“It’s one of the highlights of our lives,” team member Angela Fletcher said, “and we worked hard for it.”

The team compiled at 34-3 record, and fans throughout the region greeted their triumphant return from the championship game.

“I can’t believe it’s been 35 years,” said another team member, Joni Skiles Keith, “But we picked our friendships back up right where we left off.”

Another teammate, Teresa Duncan, is now Roane State Community College’s vice president for workforce an community development. She said the hall of fame has been in the works for several years.

“Is this not an incredible sight?” Roane State President Dr. Chris Whaley asked the crowd of some 150 people present for the ceremony. He called audience members “some of our most outstanding alumni that ever walked these hallways.”

“This has been a long time coming,” Roane State Athletic Director Randy Nesbit acknowledged of the Hall of Fame. He said athletic events are often “the window that people view a college from, and we want to enlarge that window for the future.”

Andy Landers said his years as the coach of the Raiderettes, now called the Lady Raiders, “may well have been the best four years of my life.” He said as a novice coach, “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was going to fake it until I make it.” He said he started his first season at Roane State with only seven players.

During his Roane State tenure, the Maryville native and Tennessee Tech graduate posted an 82-21 record and had three top 10 national finishes in four years.

Landers left Roane State to become the University of Georgia’s first full-time women’s basketball coach and retired in 2015 after 36 years at Georgia. He averaged 24 wins per season, among the best all-time in the sport, and had 944 career wins.

Jim Davis was the women’s basketball coach from 1975-1985 and posted a 127-35 record. His 1984 team won the Roane State’s only national title in a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) sport.

Davis went on to coach at major colleges and the Women’s National Basketball Association. He spent much of his career at Clemson University, where his teams won 355 games, earned two ACC championships and made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances.

But Davis told the Roane State crowd that “the best basketball coaches are junior college coaches because we had to do it all.”

Nine of the 12 members of the national champion Raiderettes were present for the ceremony: Kim Franklin, Cathy Johnson, Connye Crockett, Angela Fletcher, Michelle Holloway, Sandy Martin, Sue Roberts, Teresa (Sherrill) Duncan, and Joni Skiles Keith, along with manager Wendy Johnson. Other team members were Marlisa Parkes, Kathi LaMotte and Macy Hitson, and Tracy Whittenbarger was the other manager.