Column: Are we TitleTown USA?

Christian Malone

May 04, 2008 01:35 am

— ESPN is searching the United States, trying to find TitleTown USA. They ought to look at Valdosta.
After all, this city does know a thing or two about winning titles.
Valdosta is one of 68 nominees for the moniker of TitleTown USA, in a contest being held by ESPN. Now it’s up to the people of Valdosta to let the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports know why we deserve to be called TitleTown USA.
ESPN is asking for essays and videos letting it know why our town is deserving of that prestigious nickname. The network is accepting them from now until May 16.
“To nominate a town, city or municipality, submit an essay or video explaining why your town should be crowned TitleTown USA. Judges will consider pride, passion, performance, heritage, history and tradition,” ESPN’s Web site says.
The list of 68 will be narrowed down to 20 by a panel of judges. ESPN will visit those 20 cities this summer, and at the end, fans will be asked to vote online for which city is most deserving of the nickname TitleTown USA.
Valdosta, which has called itself Winnersville for almost 30 years, is competing against cities as big as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and towns as small as New Lothrop, Mich. (population 603) and Cavalier, N.D. (1,537).
A lot of those places can’t come close to matching the success we’ve had in Valdosta, though.
We’ve had minor league baseball champions (Valdosta Dodgers and Valdosta Tigers), college national champions (Valdosta State in four different sports), high school national and state champions (Valdosta High and Lowndes High) and little league state champions (Valdosta Boys and Girls Club and Valdosta-Lowndes Recreation, Parks and Community Affairs Department teams).
We’ve had school champions in football, baseball, basketball, golf, wrestling, track, cross country and tennis. We’ve had individual champions in wrestling, track, Taekwondo and mixed martial arts.
Valdosta teams have won championships in pretty much every sport played in this town.
Our city’s first championship came in 1940. Our most recent two came on Dec. 15, 2007, when both Valdosta State and Lowndes High School won football titles. We have had multiple champions in multiple sports in each of the past seven decades.
Our public schools have won titles. Our private schools have won titles. Boys teams have won titles. Girls teams have won titles.
Before integration, our all-white schools won titles and our all-black schools won titles. Once the schools integrated, they continued to win titles.
Seven different coaches have brought national championships to Valdosta.
In football alone, our three football-playing high schools have combined for 31 state and six national championships, while our university has won two national titles in the past four years.
The signs at the city limits brag of the success of our most prominent champions, the Valdosta High football team, which has won 838 games (a national record), 23 state championships and six national championships. Meanwhile, Georgia’s premier large-school football program in recent years has been the school on the other side of town, Lowndes High, which has taken three of the past four state titles in the state’s highest classification.
I count well over 100 state or national championships won by teams and people from Valdosta. This from a city of 45,529 people (according to the 2006 census estimate).
Valdostans have played in the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Masters.
Sounds like we have a pretty good argument for why we, Valdosta, Ga., could be considered TitleTown USA.
Videos and essays will be accepted through May 16. A nationwide panel will then select 19 of the 20 finalists. Fans will vote to determine the 20th town from May 26-30 on espn.com. SportsCenter will announce the 20 finalists in June and will broadcast live from those cities starting on July 4.
After all of the cities have been visited, fans will vote for the town they believe deserves to be called TitleTown USA, and the winner will be announced July 27 on SportsCenter.
To submit an entry into the contest, go to ESPN’s Web site (sports.espn.go.com/espn/titletown/index) and follow the directions.
Citizens of Valdosta, we have a lot of titles to be proud of. Let’s tell ESPN and the whole country just how much of a TitleTown we really are.