SENECA — Seneca High School announced its Second Class of the Athletic Hall of Fame on Tuesday, with the five-member group set to be inducted at halftime of the Bobcats’ football game against Southside on Sept. 24 for Hall of Fame Night.

The new class includes coach and administrator Fred Golden; athletes Hollis Hall, Aleca Johnson Queen and Eddie Wright; and athlete and contributor Charles “Dubby” Robinson.

Golden coached track & field at Seneca from 1973-85, producing four State runners-up and a streak of five consecutive region championships from 1976-80. He was named the region coach of the year eight times and the State 3A Track Coach of the Year in 1978.

Also responsible for organizing the school’s first cross country team in 1980, Golden went on to serve as an assistant principal at Seneca from 1983-95. Prior to his time at Seneca, Golden held the roles of head track coach (1963-69), head girls’ basketball coach (1964-69) and assistant football coach (1963-69) at Blue Ridge High School.

Hall was a four-year letterman in baseball — including earning team MVP honors as a senior — and three-year letterman in football at Seneca who went on to play for Clemson’s 1981 National Championship team and become a seventh-round draft choice of the San Diego Chargers in 1982.

A 1978 Seneca graduate, Hall also went on to play professionally for the Houston Gamblers and Arizona Wranglers in the USFL in 1983 and 1984. He was a team captain and three-year letterman at Clemson, where he ranked fourth in the ACC in punt returns in 1979.

Queen was a six-time letterman in softball at Seneca and helped lead the Bobcats to two 3A State Championships, three Upper State Championships and four region titles.

A 2001 Seneca grad, Queen was a three-time Louisville Slugger NFCA All-American, two-time Gatorade S.C. State Player of the Year, three-time 3A State Player of the Year and a four-time All-State selection, among numerous other honors. She finished her high school career with a 124-20 record and 1,321 strikeouts on the mound.

Queen went on to become the University of South Carolina’s all-time saves leader (18) and is currently working on her Masters in Social Work at the school. She also was an assistant coach on the Bobcats’ 2006 State Championship team.

Wright was a 10-time letterman at Seneca between basketball (3), track (4) and cross country (3). He truly excelled as a distance runner, however, becoming South Carolina’s first-ever high school runner to win all three distance events (800 meters, 1 mile and 2 miles) at a state meet, a feat that has only been duplicated once since.

A 1982 Seneca graduate, Wright was also an AAU State Champion in both the 1500 and 3000 in 1981 and 1982, and he has held all the school’s distance records for 28 years and counting. Wright served in the U.S. Air Force from 1984-94 and is currently employed with E*TRADE Financial Services.

Robinson lettered a total of 15 times across four sports at Seneca — football (4), basketball (5), track (4) and baseball (2) — before his graduation in 1958. He was a Shrine Bowler and three-time All-State selection as a quarterback on the gridiron for the Bobcats and ultimately earned a scholarship to play for Clemson, though he never took the field for the Tigers due to a knee injury. He was also leading scorer in the Skyline Conference in basketball on two separate occasions.

Robinson went on to a distinguished career at Oconee Savings and Loan of Seneca, where he worked for 40 years before retiring.

Seneca inducted its inaugural Hall of Fame class last year, with Tom Bass, Harry Hamilton, Herb Hosea, Wayne “Poss” Lacey, Jimmy Orr, Bennie Cunningham and Willie McNeil making up the first group to enter the Hall.

Seneca’s field/press box dedication ceremony to rename those facilities Coach Tom Bass Field and Herb Hosea Press Box will be held on Aug. 27 during the Bobcats’ game against Chapman.

By Kevin Pomeroy

The Journal

SENECA — Earlier this month, Seneca High School girls’ basketball coach Amanda Holder gave a familiar speech to a team coming off a victory in a State semifinal game.

No stranger to success, Holder is the fifth winningest coach in South Carolina high school girls’ basketball history and has led the Lady Bobcats to four appearances in the State title game – 1994, 1995, 1999 and 2002 – with victories in 1995 and 2002.

Seneca High School girls' basketball head coach Amanda Holder directs her team during a regular season game earlier this season. (Kenny Fey | For The Journal)

But this time it was different, as Holder was not addressing her own team, but the team from Butler High School located in Matthews, N.C.

As she delivered her speech, Butler’s actual head coach – Stephanie Butler – watched in admiration. After all, it was Holder who had given her a speech not all that different 16 years ago, when Butler played point guard for Holder’s 1994 Bobcat team that reached the finals.

“I didn’t think she was going to be able to make it, but as I was walking to the locker room before our game I just happened to look over my shoulder, and there was her and Randy, her husband,” Butler said. “It was just a sense of excitement just to have her there. She had heard about the team and kind of followed it in the local newspapers.”

But unlike the Seneca team that Butler played on during that memorable 1994 season, her new team finally got her to the top of the mountain with a victory in the Class 4A State Championship game a week later.

Needless to say, it was a proud moment for the new coach and her former coach, who laid the groundwork.

“For her to be a successful coach is not a surprise to me whatsoever,” Holder said. “She’s pretty stubborn in her ways, but once she got her mind set on what she wanted to do, she was going to be successful at it, whatever it was.”

Butler still has her old Seneca playbook, which she brings out from time to time to help her current team. She also carried on Holder’s tradition of bringing her team to the ACC Women’s Tournament, which Butler did a season ago.

“I just learned so much from her, experiences, a lot of stuff on the court and off the court,” Butler said. “She taught me, and I know I carry those things on today with my team.”

However, Butler was not the only player on that 1994 squad who took Holder’s lessons to heart.

Nikki Blassingame, who actually played through the 1995 championship season with Seneca, is the associate head coach at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where she focuses on recruiting.

UT-Chattanooga qualified for the NCAA Women’s Tournament this year, and though it lost 70-63 to Oklahoma State in the first round, the success of the team is another example of a Holder alum making a difference in the game of basketball.

As a college player, Blassingame helped lead Clemson to two ACC titles. But were it not for Holder, those banners in Littlejohn Coliseum may not ever have been hung.

“(Holder) is probably the one that actually got me to play basketball,” Blassingame said.  “She gave me my first basketball. I was more interested in cheerleading and dance. I would go to her practices because my sister was playing and I had to stay after school with her and we’d be in the hallway not the least bit interested in basketball. And one day, she told me I was going to play ball for her, and she gave me my first basketball.”

That being said, the list of success in the coaching ranks from that 1994 still does not stop with Butler and Blassingame.

Holder’s own daughter, Elizabeth, was a freshman on that team. She is currently the head coach of the girls’ basketball team at Southeast High School in Dalton, Ga. That team finished second in its region and qualified for the State playoffs as well.

Overall, despite a year in which her own team didn’t have quite as much success as she is used to, it would be hard to doubt that Amanda Holder has plenty of basketball to be proud of.

“I’m really proud of Stephanie and Nikki and Elizabeth because all three, they’ve got it,” Holder said. “They understand that hard work pays off and now they’re trying to share that with other people. Nothing tops that.”

kevin@dailyjm.com