Former Madison County High School head basketball coach (and current Wetsel Middle School principal) Tim Taylor, the emcee for the night, raises a cup along with hundreds of others to toast Katherine Johnson and celebrate her incredible 36-year teaching and coaching career in Madison. A standing-room-only crowd packed into the MCHS gym Feb. 1, the same gym where Johnson started her coaching career, for a reception to celebrate her retirement. Current and former players told stories of their years playing for Coach Johnson. Paula Dean Knight and Maggie Dean Breeden, both of whom played for Johnson, read a note from Eddie and Anne Dean (who couldn’t attend) thanking Johnson for her years at MCHS. Dean, as then-athletic director, hired Johnson right out of college in 1978, where she was the school’s first female 1,000-point scorer and a member of its hall of fame.
MADISON -- Back in 1977, then-Madison County High School Athletic Director Eddie Dean called in Katherine Johnson for a MCHS coaching job. She was fresh off a prolific career in basketball at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, where she was the Dukes first 1,000-point scorer in women’s basketball and the first female All-American. The Mountaineers just won the state championship in football a year earlier, and one in boys basketball several months earlier.
Former Madison County High School head basketball coach (and current Wetsel Middle School principal) Tim Taylor, the emcee for the night, raises a cup along with hundreds of others to toast Katherine Johnson and celebrate her incredible 36-year teaching and coaching career in Madison. A standing-room-only crowd packed into the MCHS gym Feb. 1, the same gym where Johnson started her coaching career, for a reception to celebrate her retirement. Current and former players told stories of their years playing for Coach Johnson. Paula Dean Knight and Maggie Dean Breeden, both of whom played for Johnson, read a note from Eddie and Anne Dean (who couldn’t attend) thanking Johnson for her years at MCHS. Dean, as then-athletic director, hired Johnson right out of college in 1978, where she was the school’s first female 1,000-point scorer and a member of its hall of fame.
