Georgia Tech’s Johnson guest speaker at year-end Anderson Area Touchdown Club banquet

The Anderson Area Touchdown Club will have its year-end banquet at 6 p.m. on Feb. 11 at the Anderson University Athletic Campus (old county fairgrounds).

The club will honor its players of the year, and the guest speaker will be Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson.

A meal will be served, and tickets are $15. They will be available after Wednesday by calling 226-7380.

The players of the year are Wren junior quarterback Austin McCaskill (offense), Belton-Honea Path junior linebacker Jarad Jennings, T.L. Hanna senior Don Hendrix (lineman), and B-HP senior offensive lineman Matthew Ashley (scholastic).

McCaskill passed for a school-record 3,041 yards, and also set school records in completions (215), and touchdown passes (40) while he threw only six interceptions.

Jennings led the area in tackles with 178, including 117 unassisted.

Hendrix started all 12 games, and had a team-high blocking grade average of 86 percent.

Ashley, a Shrine Bowler who’s committed to Coastal Carolina, had a 91 percent blocking grade, a 4.52 grade-point-average, scored more than 1,200 on his SAT, and is ranked 13th in a class of 220.

The coach of the year is Wren’s Jeff Tate after leading the Golden Hurricanes to a 9-3 record and their first region championship since 1980.

Johnson, who led the Yellow Jackets to the ACC Championship in 2009 and a BCS bowl berth, has a 127-46 career record with stops at Georgia Southern and Navy before coming to Georgia Tech.

A master of the option attack, Johnson guided Georgia Southern to a pair of Division 1-AA national championships.

In his first year at Tech in 2008 he picked up ACC Coach of the Year honors.

© 2010 Anderson Independent Mail. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.