Home of the Pirates

Georgia Southern to Open Armstrong Hall of Fame Exhibit on Savannah Campus

By 2017, the Armstrong State University Pirates were an NCAA Division II sports powerhouse.

It was their 50th year in collegiate athletics, during which time they won 11 National Championships, 97 Peach Belt Conference Championships, made 148 NCAA Championship appearances and produced 316 All-American athletes.

In short, it’s a legacy worth remembering.

As part of its renovations to the Armstrong Recreation Center (ARC), Georgia Southern created the Armstrong Hall of Champions to memorialize Pirate Athletics. The 650-square-foot space in the lobby of the ARC will feature their national championship trophies as well as the four Commissioner’s Cup and President’s Cup trophies they won for overall excellence and academic performance.

In addition, the space will feature many of the banners that hung from the rafters of Alumni Arena on a wall constructed from its original flooring. The Hall of Champions will also offer digital presentations that tell the story of the Pirates and the student-athletes that made them great.

“Obviously for me it’s been a labor of love to get this done with the tremendous student-athletes and coaches and administrators that went through this program,” said Lisa Sweany, former Armstrong director of athletics and current assistant vice president for administration at Georgia Southern. “We had a lot of successes in the athletics department, and to be able to finally get this pulled together and recognize those accomplishments is really, really exciting for Pirate athletics.”

The space will be formally unveiled to the public in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, Feb. 11 at 2:30 p.m.

“This is really just an important step for Georgia Southern to make sure that the communities in both Savannah and Statesboro do not forget what Armstrong athletics was about,” said Chad Jackson, former Armstrong sports information director and current director of athletics communications at Georgia Southern. “It’s a first step, but it’s an important first step.”

It would be nearly impossible to catalog the history of Armstrong athletics in an entire magazine, much less a single article. However, former student-athletes shared some of the highlights of their time as Pirates, and the program’s place in the Savannah community and in NCAA history.

IKE WILLIAMS,
Men’s Basketball, 1971-1975

If you look at the record books for Armstrong basketball, you’ll find Ike Williams’ name everywhere. He’s the second all-time leading scorer in Pirates history, second in field goals made, sixth in rebounds, first in free throws made, second in steals, seventh in assists, fourth in points per game. He is also a two-time collegiate All-American, ranked nationally by the Associated Press and United Press International — and all this at just under 6 feet 4 inches tall.

“I was never the totem pole on the team,” he said, laughing. “But I always had good physical skills. I could always jump pretty well, so I had to jump among the big guys who were three, four or five inches taller than me most of the time.”

Williams played from 1971-1975 under coach Bill Alexander, who was a pioneer of the program and an excellent recruiter, nabbing blue-chip local talent like Williams from Johnson High School and legendary player Sam Berry from Savannah High.

Back then, the Pirates played in the Savannah Civic Center, often to large, energetic crowds. And though Williams would be drafted by the Detroit Pistons in the NBA, he says nothing compared to some of the games he played for Armstrong.

“When we played Savannah State University, that was just citywide,” he said. “People came from all around town. I mean, I think it held eight or nine thousand people, but I don’t think they had enough seats when we played those games.

“That’s the highlight of my whole life.”

CALVAIN CULBERSON,
Baseball, 1985-1988 (Student-Athlete ), 1995-2017 (Asst. Coach & Head Coach)

Calvain Culberson is one of the few Pirates alumni to see Armstrong athletics from both sides of the whistle.

A native of Rome, Georgia, Culberson joined the Pirates baseball team in 1985 under legendary coach Joe Roberts, the second all-time winningest baseball coach in NCAA Division II history. When Culberson arrived, Armstrong had just moved up as a founding member of the Division I Big South Conference. Though they never took the championship, they boasted winning records and won their division two out of three years. In 1988, they moved back down to Division II and made it to the College World Series.

During his four years as an outfielder, Culberson left his mark on the Armstrong baseball record books. He is first all-time for stolen bases, second for runs scored, seventh in triples and total bases, and boasted a 32-game hitting streak in 1988. After the ‘88 season, he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, and then after two seasons moved to the role of pitcher and made his way up to Triple-A with the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox before retiring in 1995.

When he finished his career, Roberts was looking for an assistant, and asked if he would be interested in coming back to coach.

“I mean, that was kind of a no-brainer,” said Culberson. “I’d love to coach at my alma mater and coach with him because he was such a great coach.”

As an assistant coach, Culberson helped Roberts and the Pirates to even more success. Armstrong made it to the Division II College World Series Regionals seven times, won the Peach Belt Tournament twice, and won the Peach Belt regular season title four times. In 2014, after Roberts retired from coaching, Culberson took the reins as head coach of the Pirates and continued their winning ways. He took the team to the Peach Belt Conference championship twice and amassed an overall 104-91 head coaching record.

“I loved coaching here,” he said. “I can say that it was something that I’d always dreamed about doing — coming back to where I played for Coach Roberts. My wife is also from Savannah and had a job here at the University. It was just a perfect fit.”

Culberson says the Hall of Champions is a way to remember the great tradition of excellence at Armstrong.

“I’m very appreciative that Georgia Southern and Dr. Marrero and supporters are wanting to honor the history that was here. It means a lot, and it’s going to mean a lot to the former student-athletes that were here.”

DZIYANA NAZARUK,
Women’s Tennis, 2004-2007

A native of Minsk, Belarus, Dziyana Nazaruk came to Armstrong when she was 17 years old. She didn’t speak English, and she’d never experienced life outside the former Soviet Union.

“I grew up during perestroika in the ’90s, which were difficult times for everybody,” she said. “So tennis was kind of an escape from the reality, and it was also an opportunity to do something different in life.”

Nazaruk had been recruited by several universities, but she chose Armstrong not only because they had a Russian assistant coach who guided her through recruitment, but also because when she looked at a map, she saw Savannah was near the ocean.

“It sounded so exotic,” she said.

By the time Nazaruk arrived, Armstrong tennis was widely considered a juggernaut, winning a pair of national championships in the mid-1990s, and head coach Simon Earnshaw was continuing that trend.

In all four years as a player, Nazaruk and the women’s tennis team won the Peach Belt Championship and made it to the NCAA Division II tournament. In 2005, however, they went undefeated, winning both the conference and NCAA championships. Nazaruk was named the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s “Player to Watch” that year, and she is ninth on the all-time match wins list for singles, and 11th for doubles.

“It was amazing,” said Nazaruk about their national championship. “It wasn’t about just an individual win. It was the whole team just crying together, including our coaches. That was definitely the most amazing experience ever.”

But when she’s asked about the highlight of her time at Armstrong, Nazaruk says it was more about the family she found, with teammates, in classes and on campus. And today, as an assistant professor in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern, she wants to pay that experience forward.

“When I came here, people were helping for no reason, and that was weird to me,” she said. “To this day, I feel like if I can do that for my students sometimes or in some way would be such a big accomplishment. Being there for somebody during a difficult time, you know how you can help them.”

The Hall of Champions will forever be home to even more stories like these. It will be a place where students and community members can get a glimpse of Pirate history, and where former student-athletes can remember their glory days.

“Oh, man, my grandkids are going to be happy,” said Williams. “They’re going to know who their grandpa was.”— Doy Cave

WINNING PROGRAMS