This is Part Two of our exploration of the Anderson College and Augusta College table tennis rivalry. In Part One, we took a look at the formation of both programs, and you can read that here.

Part Two …

Derek May is a chopper.

You’ll need to understand table tennis — competitive table tennis — to know what that means.

It’s a style of play that typically confounds most folks on the table. It’s built on patience, relying on defensive measures to bait aggressive players into making mistakes. 

Today, if you watch table tennis in the Olympics — or, let’s say, on ESPN’s annual “Ocho Day” coverage — you’re likely used to seeing the players slowly and steadily backing up as they deliver stronger and stronger strikes. It’s an intensity that exceeds your likely experiences of the game, cobbled together at your college’s student center or during a rain delay at your neighborhood swimming pool.

It’s fast-paced. It’s forceful. It’s overpowering.

A chopper, however, counters this cleverly. They might retreat, but also may creep up closer to the table. Shots may feature spin … or they may not. Strokes may appear firm, but they might land soft.

“Their biggest weapon is deception,” said Greg Riley, a member of Anderson College’s table tennis teams in the early 1990s. “So they’re just chopping the ball. They’re not attacking, not hitting or trying to smash it past you. They’re just chopping, but a lot of the time they’re using different variations. The same stroke with different spin on it.”

Choppers like Derek, however, didn’t faze Riley.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Parkview High School’s first state championship.

Buster Faulkner started under center for that title-winning team. 

Of course, at the end of the season.

Faulkner, who earned time at quarterback as a sophomore early in the season, was given the starting job after coaches decided to move junior quarterback Jeremy Muyres to wide receiver.

They made the right move.

The 1997 team captured the title, but Faulkner says those Panther teams from a few years earlier were the breakthrough for a Gwinnett County dynasty that would stretch out across  the next decade.

As Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium rocked around him, the roar of 51,875 fans mushrooming up, out, and over a success-starved city, a breath after Atlanta-born Marquis Grissom ran down Carlos Baerga’s drive in the gap, Bob Costas delivered his line.

“The team of the nineties has its world championship!”

Everyone who heard his words the night of October 28, 1995 understood. They remembered the gut-wrenching Game 7 loss to the Twins that ended 1991’s magical run, and falling to Pat Borders and the Blue Jays in ‘92, and seeing the 104-win ‘93 season go for naught with an NLCS loss to the Phillies. 

Disappointments all, even within the context of a team and a city that had accomplished little of note in the decades leading up to its first major professional sports championship. 

But now? A spellbinding performance from Tom Glavine, a solo home run from David Justice, and it was done. It was theirs.  

“It was a breath of fresh air. It was exultation,” said Wayne Coleman, who watched the celebration unfold from the same seat in the front row behind the third-base dugout he had held since 1982. “It was just delirium. It was joy.” 

This is Part Three of our look back at the history of NewsChannel 32, a television station that provided in-depth coverage of local news and sports for Northeast Georgia. In Part One, we took a look at the formation of the station and the work of its news department, and you can read it here. In Part Two, we explored the reputation and reach of its sports department, and you can read it here.

If you can name it, Michael Castengera has probably done it.

He’s been a reporter and an editor. 

He’s worked in print journalism and broadcast journalism.

He’s run a local radio station and served as a consultant to some of the biggest media companies in the country.

It was a breadth of professional experience that made him the natural fit to lead a new hybrid journalism project at the University of Georgia that mixed education and newsgathering as WNEG — long a fixture for Northeast Georgia — migrated its operations south.

“When they acquired the station, because I had been a general manager, they decided that I would be the logical one to take over when we do it,” Castengera said with a laugh. “Well, like an idiot, I agreed.”

The promise of the station under the control of the University of Georgia made sense in the abstract, pairing one of the nation’s premier journalism programs with a professional, commercial television station to help create a learning laboratory. It represented a significant shift from the original intent of WNEG, which functioned largely as a community asset that focused on the stories of the small communities throughout the region.

This is a guest feature article from Bill Chastain, a veteran sportswriter who worked for the Tampa Bay Tribune for several years covering everything from Major League Baseball to golf, before working for MLB.com to cover the Tampa Bay Rays. A freelance writer living in Atlanta, he also is the author of several books, including Peachtree Corvette Club and The Streak.

Georgia Tech’s football team flew to Charlottesville on November 2, 1990. They went straight to Scott Stadium for a light workout that Friday. A date with No. 1 Virginia awaited the following day.

Alice Ross watched while her husband, Tech coach Bobby Ross, took his team through its paces. Bill Millsaps spotted Alice and approached. The sports columnist and editor of the Richmond Times-Gazzette told her. “Virginia is going to whip up on ya’ll pretty good.”

“He was serious,” Bobby Ross said. “So she said, ‘No they’re not. You want to bet?’ He went along. They bet a box of Mounds candy bars.”

ESPN’s “College Gameday” road show is bringing its production to Athens this weekend for Georgia’s home opener against Auburn. While COVID-19 restrictions will shift the broadcast inside Sanford Stadium, meaning no throngs of fans with outrageous signs, this does offer an opportunity to tell a story involving two of your humble editors here at BTT. On September 28, 2013, ESPN visited Athens to host its popular football preview show in advance of a Top 10 matchup between Georgia and LSU. 

The game itself was heralded as one of the biggest ones to be played Between The Hedges in years with LSU bringing Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry to the Classic City to tangle with Georgia and its All-American running back Todd Gurley. 

At the time, Joe and Johnathan were working at a regional public relations and marketing agency with an Athens office known for its own brand of shenanigans and hijinks. Joe was knocking on the door of his 30th birthday, and the team in Athens decided to celebrate the only way they knew how — by printing out a massive photo of Joe’s face and getting it on “Gameday.”

In 2007 and 2008, the University of Georgia won back-to-back national championships.

Did you know that?

It seems worth mentioning, right?

Now, it didn’t have title-starved fans pouring out of the stands at the New Orleans Superdome. There was no sugar falling from the sky to celebrate this title. It wasn’t even a scrappy basketball team playing three games in 30 hours to win a conference tournament no one thought they could.

Instead, it was greeted with little fanfare on campus, even from those who were actually on the title-winning team.

It was just four guys who hung out at Sandy Creek Park in Athens who decided to snag some Georgia shirts at a Walmart and head down to Augusta to play some disc golf.

“I can’t even stress to you how casual this whole thing was,” said Pete McPherson, an All-American on Georgia’s national champion disc golf teams of 2007 and 2008. “Laid back is the positive term for it I guess, but it was just not a big deal for anyone involved.”

In the 1990s and 2000s, the University of Georgia established itself as the most dominant force in college gymnastics. The Gym Dogs have tallied the most team and individual national championships in NCAA history, producing a litany of All-Americans and Olympians throughout their 30-plus year run of success.

One of key contributors during the early days of that run was Karin Lichey-Usry, a heralded gymnast who was part of two national championship teams in the late 1990s. During her freshman season of 1995-1996, Lichey-Usry achieved what no other gymnast had done before – registering four perfect scores of 10 in a single competition. 

Interviews, editing and compilation by Johnathan McGinty and Thomas Ehlers

Mercer men’s basketball

Underdog stories are built on belief, and there was no doubt among the 2014 Mercer men’s basketball team. The Bears cruised to the conference title, boasted the top mid-major conference player in the country and captured a spot in March Madness, a dream scenario for most mid-sized schools. That, however, was just the start of something that would grow bigger than themselves.

BRIAN GERRITY, executive director of the Mercer Athletic Foundation: It’s funny, that game, the way I think of it is that game is the biggest moment in Mercer history. Win or lose, that game is as big of a stage as Mercer will ever be on. Right?

ANTHONY WHITE JR, Mercer men’s basketball player: It was surreal. You’ve got to think, the only thing a lot of people in the country saw was us winning that game. They didn’t see all of the practices, all of the conditioning sessions, all of the weightlifting, all of the other stuff come into play. 

JANE HEETER, Mercer journalism student: I mean, Mercer is small and that’s partly why I wanted to go there. This type of thing was what I had hoped for and what I felt like was possible going to a small school like Mercer.

This is the story of one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history, told through the perspectives of players, staff members, fans and journalists who were there.