Today's interviewee is Becky Taylor, a sports writer with the Tifton Gazette, researcher with the Georgia High School Football Historians Association and creator of the Georgia High School Basketball Project. She's well-versed on the Georgia Interscholastic Association that governed sports for black schools during segregation, Georgia's state basketball tournament and the history of high schools in Georgia.
Becky Taylor, Tifton Gazette sports writer
1. What's your background, and how did that lead you to becoming a sports writer covering high school sports? "My father was a football and basketball statistician at Berrien, and I grew up on the sidelines. When I was 11, Keith Powell, former Berrien girls basketball coach, then at Nashville Middle, invited me to start keeping scorebooks. That led to a desire to know everything about local sports history, which progressed to the statewide level. When I decided to get into journalism, I always knew I'd be writing about high school sports."
2. Some sports writers report high school sports because that's what they're assigned. You seem to enjoy that more than anything else you might be assigned. Why is that? What attracts you to high school sports, and football in particular? "High school sports, especially football, are tied so heavily to each community. You often see black and gold signs for politicians in Moultrie and Valdosta. There's nothing quite like seeing a whole county turn out for a big game."
3. You've been a major contributor and researcher for GHSFHA, most notably regarding the history of the GIA and its champions. What inspired you to do that research, and what were the most interesting things that you discovered? "Derrick Mahone and J.C. Clemons wrote a three-part series of AJC articles in 2002 about the GIA and its history. Included with that was a partial list of state champions for each sport. I love a research project, especially when it involves uncharted territory. Since then, myself and others have filled in every football championship and nearly every basketball one and a handful of track. Interesting discoveries are the existence of Class C in the GIA from 1948 to '64; that Gainesville's Fair Street High was unable to play a Class B semifinal game in 1952 against Cedar Hill of Cedartown because of a lack of funds; and former Georgia Attorney General Eugene Cook's stepping in to stop a charity football game between Summerville Negro and Hill in LaFayette in 1956 because they'd be using a white high school's football field. Most GIA schools shared fields with white high schools. Why Cook picked on this game in particular is still a mystery." [Those AJC articles prompted the GHSA to list the GIA's champions on its website. Surviving GIA records showed 32 football champions from 1948 to 1969. Taylor found most of the other 28, and several more in other sports, through newspaper research. Note that GIA championships were not well-covered by larger white-owned newspapers, so her research required searching several smaller papers on microfilm.]
4. You've also created the Georgia High School Basketball Project. Why and how did you do that? "The Georgia High School Basketball Project is a history of the GHSA and GIA state basketball tournaments. I've been lazy and haven't completely updated 2019, but I do have a score for every GHSA state tournament game, a history that stretches back to 1922. I'm in the process of adding more to the GIA brackets and hope to someday get SEAIS/GISA brackets put together. In addition, I have a list of known high schools from throughout state history, with dates and nicknames as known. School histories fascinate me greatly, and I'm constantly reading newspaper archives from around the state."
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