Photo courtesy Otis Jones III
Four new members are inducted into the Coweta Sports Hall of Fame. From left are Eric Geter, Butch Holiday, Gail Herring (accepting for Robert Herring) and Jim Morgan.
The Coweta Sports Hall of Fame recently inducted four new members during ceremonies at the Coweta County Fairgrounds.
This year’s inductees were Jim Morgan, the late Robert Herring III, Eric Geter and Clifford “Butch” Holiday.
Morgan, a 1972 graduate of Newnan High School and a former member of the Coweta County Board of Commissioners, has been involved as a coach at the youth, middle school or high school level in Coweta County for over 40 years, and was the first to win a region championship as both a wrestler and a coach.
He was recently inducted into the Georgia chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Robert Herring III served as the head football coach for the Newnan High School Cougars from 1999-2008. In that period of time, he won three region championships and went to the playoffs seven times, including a trip to the Class AAAAA semifinals in 2003 and 2008.
Herring won the Region 4-AAAAA Coach of the Year three years in a row from 2006-2008.
In ten seasons coaching for the Cougars, his teams registered a combined 77-44 record.
Eric Geter played for the Clemson Tigers, where he was an all-conference defensive back, after playing under Coach Max Bass at Newnan High School.
At Newnan High School, Geter was considered one of the top high school football players in Georgia and the top running back and defensive back in the state.
Geter played for Clemson from 1989-1992, before joining the Canadian Football League, where he played from 1994-1996, playing for the Las Vegas Posse and then the Ottawa Rough Riders.
Clifford “Butch” Holiday played his entire senior year at Newnan High School in 1978 with a shoulder injury. Despite that injury, he scored 25 touchdowns and rushed for 1,000 yards. That level of play earned him a scholarship to Florida State University, where he played under the legendary Bobby Bowden.
Holiday redshirted his first seasons at FSU while he transitioned from running back to wide receiver and recuperated from shoulder surgery.
As a member of the FSU Seminoles, he was the top wide receiver on the depth chart as a junior in 1981, and was named Receiver of the Week four consecutive weeks.
Even more impressive, Holiday did not drop a single pass during the entire season.
In 1984, Holiday was invited to attend camp with the USFL’s Memphis Showboats and signed a contract to play for the team, but his career came to an end after injuring his hamstring.
The Coweta Sports Hall of Fame was born as an idea in the late 1990s by former Newnan Times-Herald sports writer Johnny Brown. It came to fruition in 2001 and the inaugural class was inducted in February of 2003.
The mission for the Hall of Fame is to recognize amateur and professional athletes, coaches, sportswriters, referees and other sports figures who have brought distinction and credit to themselves and Coweta County.
