BEST OF BI Athens
Editor, Ryan Scates reflects on most memorable moments Issue 11 marks the end of the first year of Bulldawg Illustrated Athens run. It has been a wild ride and a great experience to help put together the publication every other week during spring semester. Of course, covering all of the spring sports from basketball to tennis has taken us to some cool and unexpected places. We have compiled a list of the best moments that went into making BI Athens in 2010.
Hanging from the Rafters at Stegeman
Time spent with Dan Magill
For a lowly college senior doing his best to cover the Dawgs, UGA Sports Information Director Claude Felton is an intimidating guy. So you can imagine how it took all the nerve I had to go and ask him if I could take some photos from the rafters above the court at Stegeman Coliseum. The “Claude-father” reluctantly agreed to let me go up to the rafters for one half of one game, so long as he was aware ahead of time so he could let the Fire Marshall know I was up there. We agreed on the South Carolina game and got some great shots from above the court. It was a great experience and I owe a big thanks to Mr. Felton for trusting me to take those photos!
In Athens, Dan Magill is one of those names that ring as heavy as Vince Dooley, Larry Munson or Herschel Walker. You don’t have to know everything about the man to know that he is an Athens institution, so I was pretty surprised when I walked into the ITA Hall of Fame and he took me around for a personal tour. Coach Magill was sharp, gracious, and knew more about tennis than I ever knew there was to know about tennis. But perhaps the best part of the afternoon was when he started telling Lewis Grizzard stories. I am a big sucker for anything Grizzard, so hearing about the man first-hand from Magill was quite a treat.
Men’s Hoops Beats Tennessee
The SEC Golf Championships
In my four years at Georgia, no non-football regular season event has had a “football-like” atmosphere like this game did. Georgia had yet to win an SEC game, but the student body and Athens showed up in force when Tennessee came to the Stegosaurus. Tennessee was heavily favored and had just knocked off top-ranked Kansas in Knoxville, but on this day Mark Fox let the Hoop Dawgs off the leash. Perhaps the defining moment of the very young Mark Fox era came on Travis Leslie’s breakaway windmill dunk. That jam told Tennessee and the rest of the SEC that Georgia Hoops is back.
Like many of our readers, I consider myself to be a “golfer”, but what made this event so special had little to do with actual sporting event. Using the SEC Golf Championships at Sea Island as a decoy, I plotted with BI publishers Vance and Cheri Leavy a way to propose to my longtime girlfriend. On Friday night she said yes at the Beach Club and then Saturday we all went and watched the Dawgs tear up the competition at the Seaside course at the Lodge. It was an incredible weekend and Vance and Cheri provided some memories that will last a lifetime. Oh yeah, and Georgia won the golf tournament too. Photos by Ryan Scates
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June 3, 2010