About Inductee

Ronnie Vaughn was a three-sport star in the late-1970s at Huntsvilles Grissom High School. He later became a highly successful player and coach at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro before returning to the Tennessee Valley to work and raise a family. Born Jan. 10, 1961, Vaughn is the son of former Tennessee Tech basketball player Dennis Vaughn and Joyce Vaughn, a former certified high school referee. Ronnie has an older brother, Rob, a Grissom graduate who was captain of the U.S. Military Academy basketball team when Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski was coaching at West Point, and a sister, Julie Oswell, a former All-State gymnast at Grissom. Ronnie Vaughn lettered at Grissom in football, basketball and baseball as a junior and senior. An All-City catcher as a senior in 1979, he first signed to play baseball at Roane State Community College before transferring to MTSU, which won the OVC championship and played in the finals of the NCAA Regional at Oklahoma State in his junior year. My biggest memory as a player was that tournament in Stillwater when we were one win away from advancing to the College World Series, Vaughn said. In the second game, I was chasing a pop foul and ran into the brick wall, splitting my lip. They had to take me to the locker room to sew it up. After being named the All-OVC catcher as a senior, he signed a professional contract with the Detroit Tigers and played for a time in the Rookie League and at Class-A Lakeland before returning to Middle Tennessee as a graduate assistant. Later he was elevated to assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. In his nine years as assistant coach at MTSU, the school won six conference baseball championships and played in five NCAA Regionals. Since coming back to the Huntsville area in the mid-90s, he has helped coach Little League and youth Travel Baseball teams, and continues to be invited to speak at numerous coaching clinics. Vaughn and his former wife, Leigh, are the parents of a daughter, Jayce, a 2007 Grissom graduate and a three-time All-Metro girls golfer of the year. She is now a senior at UAH. Jayces brother Hogan, who died in a car accident in 2009, was the No. 1 player on the Grissom boys golf team. He played on the Grissom varsity as a seventh grader, was named All-Metro as a freshman, won the Future Masters Tournament in Dothan at 14, and later played in the U.S. Junior Amateur at Shoal Creek. Ronnie Vaughn worked as a manager at Wal-Mart and later at Kohls before becoming the manager of the Apple Store at Bridge Street in Huntsville. He now lives in Decatur with his wife, Candi, and their children, Madison and Logan.