1964-65 Father Ryan Basketball Team Seated: Lyn Dempsey, Martin Gilmore, Champ Hounihan, Pat Sanders, Willie Brown, and Don White. Standing: Kenny Crump, Danny Lammers, James Harper, Robert Forte, Coach Bill Derrick, Jerry McGrath, Bob Lisle, Don Craighead, and manager Bob Reese.

Father Ryan High School will commemorate the occasion on Friday, January 14, 2005 with a dinner for the 1964-65 players and coaches from Ryan and Pearl in Father Ryan High School's Neuhoff Library at 5:30 p.m. Immediately following the dinner, the 1964-65 players and coaches will be recognized at the Father Ryan vs. BA basketball game in the Father Ryan field house at 7:20 p.m.

The 1965 game was played to a capacity crowd of 8,300 screaming fans at the Municipal Auditorium. So loud was the crowd that Ryan had a technical foul called against it in the first period for failing to answer the buzzer after a timeout. According to newspaper accounts, Ryan's Coach Bill Derrick said he never heard the horn. The game was played at Municipal Auditorium because neither school's facilities could hold the anticipated large crowd.

The Pearl Tigers, led by the late legendary Coach Cornelius Ridley, were favored to win. A season earlier, the team won what was then called the State Championship for Negro High Schools. But in the final seconds the Irish defeated the Tigers by one point (52-51). The wining points came when Ryan's Lynn Dempsey, a 5'10" guard, rebounded a missed shot and dropped in a 15-footer as the horn sounded.

The star of the game was Ryan guard Willie Brown who scored 21 points. Brown was the first black player in the history of the Nashville Interscholastic League (NIL). He received All-NIL honors for his performances on the court. A decade earlier in 1954, Father Ryan High School became the first school in Nashville to integrate and in 1963 the first school in Nashville to include black athletes on its teams. It is believed no other school in Nashville and perhaps Tennessee had an integrated team at that time.

Several players found success in basketball well after this precedent setting duel. After graduating from Father Ryan, Willie Brown distinguished himself as a basketball player in the Ohio Valley Conference playing for MTSU. He died tragically at a young age in a motorcycle accident. His special place in Ryan's and Nashville's athletic history has been honored with a commemorative plaque that has been on display for many years in the Father Ryan gymnasium on Elliston Place and now at the field house on the Norwood Drive campus. Pearl forward Perry Wallace became the first black to play in the SEC at Vanderbilt. His teammate Ted McClain became an All-American for Tennessee State University before playing professionally for the Carolina Cougars, The Louisville Colonels, and the Phoenix Suns.

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story submitted by Lois Fleming, Director of External Affairs