The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association hall of fame includes such notable names as former NBA players Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and Ben Wallace, ex-NFL players Art Shell and Willie Lanier, and college coaching legend Clarence “Big House” Gaines.
Now you can add former Roanoke mayor Sherman Lea to that list.
Lea, a former center for the Virginia Union University football team, was inducted into the CIAA hall of fame three weeks ago. The CIAA is the athletic conference that includes Virginia Union, Virginia State and a number of other historically Black colleges that belong to NCAA Division II.
“Very humbling,” Lea, 72, said in a recent interview.
Lea was known as “Sugar” in his Virginia Union days in the 1970s.
He used to wear a belt buckle with the letter “S” on it, which he liked because of his first name. But when a coed asked him what the “S” stood for, a Virginia Union teammate trying to make Lea look good told her it stood for “Sugar.” It became his nickname at school for real.
People are also reading…
And now “Sugar” has received a sweet honor.
Brief time at Shaw
Lea grew up in Pittsylvania County.
“I was fortunate and blessed that I had parents that said, ‘You’re going to school and you’re going to get your grades and you’re not going to get involved with … fighting,” Lea said.
Lea attended Southside High School, which was a segregated school for Black students, before spending his senior year at integrated Dan River High School.
“We lost our school identity,” Lea said. “It got better, but that first year (of integration) was a year of transition.”
One of his former coaches at Southside recommended him to the football coach at Shaw, a CIAA college in North Carolina.
“Back in my day, … African-Americans weren’t going to … big-time schools. They would take a few athletes, but the majority of us went to those (historically Black) schools,” Lea said. “I wasn’t that All-American star.”
After graduating from Dan River in 1970, Lea headed down to Shaw to begin his college football career. But he left during preseason practice, before classes had even begun.
“I stayed about three days,” he said. “They put us in trailers and the guys (on the team) would kick the walls … at night and said, ‘We’re going to get you tomorrow.’ … That was intimidating.
“(It was my) first time being away from home. I didn’t know anybody. And then you saw guys … that looked like grown men out there.”
When he returned home, one of his former Southside coaches, Robert Barksdale, told him he needed to give college football another try.
“He said, ‘Wait a minute, you’re not going to stay here. There’s nothing here for you but Dan River mills and tobacco factories. You’re better than that,’” Lea said.
Barksdale recommended him to a coach at Virginia Union. So Lea headed to the Richmond school for his second shot at college football.
‘A tough game’
Lea did not play for Virginia Union during the 1970 season because he got injured in practice. But he saw action the following four seasons and earned a partial football scholarship.
“You’re not getting a free education. Every day at 3 o’clock you’ve got to go out and bash heads with people. You’ve got to get angry,” Lea said. “You learn how to compete. You learn teamwork, which I think helped me with what I’ve been doing since I left school — you’ve got to work with people.
“Football is a tough game, a hard game. … You get hit, hurt. They tell you to spit the tooth out. … But it teaches you a life lesson that life’s going to be hard and you’re going to get knocked down, but you’ve got to stay with it.”
One of the assistant coaches, Jesse Chavis, did not take it easy on the Virginia Union players in practice.
“He’d have us running up hills, carrying people on our backs,” Lea said. “One time with me, because I missed a block or he felt I wasn’t doing what I should, he had everybody line up and everybody would come and deliver a blow to me. I could deliver it back, but can you imagine 30-plus guys lining up, coming at you?”
The Panthers’ head coach for Lea’s final four seasons was the legendary Willard Bailey, who is also a member of the CIAA hall of fame. Bailey became the winningest football coach in CIAA history, but he also cared about how the players did in the classroom.
“You’d see the coach on campus and he’d say, ‘What have you been reading?’” Lea said.
Bailey attended Lea’s hall of fame induction ceremony in Baltimore last month.
Lea had some talented teammates, including fellow offensive lineman Herb Scott, who went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys. Scott is also in the CIAA hall of fame.
“Herb was singing in a gospel choir (during Virginia Union’s season). We’d be in a Saturday night game and he would be up in church the next day, singing,” Lea said.
Another teammate, Anthony Leonard, also went on to play in the NFL.
Lea has been inducted into Virginia Union’s hall of fame — as both an individual and as a member of the 1973 Panthers team that won the CIAA title.
The 1973 squad went 9-1, losing a nonconference game to a South Carolina State squad that included Donnie Shell, who went on to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Virginia Union, which shut out six of its final seven foes, won the program’s first CIAA crown in 50 years.
“People didn’t score on us. That kept us in a lot of games until our offense was able to come around,” Lea said.
Lea had a car on campus — sometimes. He shared a car with a younger brother who attended Virginia State. So Lea would drive the car for a week, then hand it over to his brother to have for a week.
The Panthers went 7-2 in 1974, which was Lea’s senior season.
Scott was chosen in the 1975 NFL Draft. Lea was not.
“Dallas sent a lot of potential guys letters. If they were scouting you, they would send you a letter,” Lea said. “They sent that letter to my parents, and (my parents) thought I was on my way to Dallas.
“I was naive enough to figure that I’m going to get a call (to the NFL). If you’re a senior, you have that in the back of your mind.”
‘One of ours’
Lea was one of seven people in this year’s CIAA hall of fame class.
“He was an outstanding player for Virginia Union,” said Al Roseboro, a member of the hall of fame selection committee.
But Lea, who served as Roanoke’s mayor from 2016-24, was chosen not only because of his football past but also in recognition of what he has accomplished off the field.
“The … thing that really got the committee’s attention was the many things he had done since leaving college — his civic contributions, especially the political work he has done,” Roseboro said.
Sometimes, Lea’s civic efforts and love for sports combined.
He was one of the people behind the Western Virginia Education Classic, which annually used to bring two CIAA teams to Victory Stadium for a game that helped raise money for a program that tried to persuade dropouts to return to school. Virginia Union played in the first five games.
In 2015, he started a basketball league for teenagers that used to be held each summer.
“The focus was police and young people’s relationships. I thought that was important,” he said. “Police officers were scorekeepers, coaches. … I wanted them to come together, to know each other. … I wanted those kids to see police officers in a different light, more so than just when they’re coming to arrest somebody.”
In 2017, when the City of Salem was making a pitch to host the CIAA football title game at Salem Stadium, Lea was asked to meet with the CIAA delegation that was visiting Salem.
“He was our closer,” Salem civic facilities director Carey Harveycutter said. “He talked about how much the CIAA meant to him … and why this was the perfect location for the CIAA to bring their football championship. We would never have had that championship without Sherman Lea.
“And then he was involved every year of the championship. When the teams reported to Salem, he would go and meet with the coaches and give a welcome, along with our mayor. He would work with the kids when they did a community-service visit at Addison or one of the other Roanoke City schools.
“When we hosted (CIAA) bowling or cross-country (championships), he always made an appearance at those as well.”
The CIAA football title game became an annual event in Salem, although the league will be moving the game from Salem to Durham, North Carolina, for the next three seasons.
Lea’s involvement with the CIAA football title game was another reason he was chosen for the CIAA hall of fame.
“He … made the CIAA flourish because he was one of ours,” Roseboro said.
Mark Berman (540) 981-3125
mark.berman@roanoke.com
0 comments
Be the first to know
Get local news delivered to your inbox!