I was standing in the cafeteria before the start of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday, waiting to speak to Mike Creasman when I was tapped on the shoulder.

It took me a moment to recognize Veronica Freeman Reese.

She was a fine basketball player for coach Jo Ellis at Colquitt County High and went on to an extraordinary career at Augusta’s Paine College, where she has been inducted into its athletic Hall of Fame. Still, I don’t think I had seen her since she last walked off the Gladys Espy Gymnasium court in 1989.

She was selected for induction into the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame last year, but because of some complications with a pregnancy, she was unable to attend the banquet.

After leaving Paine College, she got into education and was an instructional coach in Glynn County before moving during the last year to Albany, where she is back teaching at the elementary school level.

We talked briefly and she made it clear how honored she was to have been selected for the Hall of Fame, how disappointed she was not to have been able to receive her plaque last and how pleased to be able to part of this year’s event.

She would have been right at home with the Class of 2007, which included three fine basketball players from an earlier era: Gwyned Bius, Beth McCoy Redding and Wanda Purvis Ross.

The other 2007 inductees were Creasman, Greg Bright, Wenbo Chen, Tony DeRosso, Parks Hughes, Rocky Jones, George “Bubba’ Kendrick, Jay Lerew, Christopher McCranie Robert H. Tharpe Sr. and Bennett Willis.

And Veronica shares some other traits with the members of the 2007 Class that Jim Hughes identified during his pre-introductions comments.

Hughes, the former longtime head football coach at Colquitt County High, said the newest Hall of Famers were “quiet, they deflected praise and would rather talk about someone else rather than themselves.”

The winningest coach in Packer football history said none of this group of athletes would not have been into some of the current “trash-talking, finger-pointing, me, me, me” antics now fashionable in some areas.

He noted that this group was made up of leaders and scholars, who knew that athletics was just part of the academic process.

“They are givers not takers,” Hughes said of the group. And they remember their roots.”

It was apropos that Hughes should take such a big part in this year’s banquet.

Four members of this year’s class — Greg Bright, Tony DeRosso, Christopher McCranie and his son Parks — were on his 1991 Colquitt County High football team that went 7-3 during the regular season, but won four straight games on the road during the playoffs before bringing the state championship game “Back to the Mack,” as downtown store windows proclaimed that fall.

Hughes asked for some indulgence from what may have been the largest group ever to attend a Hall of Fame banquet.

He talked about that team and how it captured the community’s imagination as it won on successive weeks in Tifton, Warner Robins, Hinesville and Marietta during the playoffs.

Hughes coached eight more seasons before retiring and he said he never had to worry about community support again.

And, he said, that 1991 team taught some important lessons:

• “You better prepare for a long season,” he said. The 1937 Packers played 13 games. The 1972, 1984 and 1989 teams had played 12. The 1991 state runner-up was the first to play 15.

• “Don’t leave early,” Hughes said, mentioning the overtime victories over Lowndes in the regular season and over Marietta in the state semifinals.

• “It’s OK to get excited,”he said. “It’s OK to have some emotional investment in teen-age athletes. And it’s OK to have impossible dreams.”

Hughes led the 1994 Colquitt County football team to a 15-0 record and the state championship, the only one in school history. But it was emotionally clear that he still has has a special attachment to that team.

“I’m proud to have been associated with them,” he said.

HALL OF FAME NOTES: The banquet drew 30 current members of the Hall of Fame. Two Hall of Famers — Tom White and Gene Littleton — were ill an unable to attend. … Four members of the 2007 Class — Bright, McCranie, Bius and Willis — are University of Georgia graduates. … Among those attending the banquet was former Norman Park High basketball coach Herbert Houston, who lives in Rabun Gap. He was the high school coach of Wanda Purvis Ross … A large contingent from Thomas County attended to support Kendrick’s induction.