From a coach still making her mark to a player from more than three-quarters of a century ago, the Macon Sports Hall of Fame will grow by eight members Tuesday night.
          Festivities begin with the plaque unveiling in the lobby of the Macon Coliseum at 6 p.m. with the dinner and ceremony to start 30 minutes later in the Monument Room.
          Donnie Allen, Jimmy Turner, Michael Mimbs, Susie Gardner, John Rocker, George Foster, Edith Gerhardt, and Gerald Fitch will be inducted, coming from baseball, football, basketball, and tennis.
          FPD, Tattnall, Miller, Southeast, Westside, Lanier, and Windsor have new members of the Hall, with colleges Mercer, Georgia Southern, Georgia, Wesleyan being represented as well.
          Tickets are $30 and available the door or by contacting Johnny Crawford at 718-9941.
          The class, with bios provided by the Hall (with edits):

Donnie Allen
          Allen was a star athlete at both Tattnall and Georgia Southern.
          He played high school football and ran track at Tattnall from 1982-84, leading the Trojans football team to an 11-1-1 record and a GISA region championship his senior season. In his final year, he had 11 TD receptions while earning Team MVP honors as well as All-City, All-Region, All-Middle Georgia, and All-State recognition.
          Donnie was also a standout in track, participating in the 100- and 200-meter races.
          Following his high school playing days, he enrolled at Georgia Southern and was a two-year starter for the Eagles.
          As a junior, he caught 11 passes for 92 yards, and as a senior, when Southern won its third national championship, he snagged 18 passes for 300 yards for an average of better than 16 yards per catch. Allen also was a member of GSC’s l-AA national runner-up team of 1988.
          He signed with the New York Jets, but his professional career was cut short because of an injury suffered during preseason camp.

Gerald Fitch
          One of the biggest honors for an athlete is to have their jersey number retired, and that happened for former Westside great Gerald Fitch, whose number 4 was set aside earlier this year by the Seminoles.
          Fitch, who was Mr. Georgia Basketball Class 4A in 2000, averaged 26.5 points a game for Westside before signing a scholarship to play for Tubby Smith at the University of Kentucky.
          Fitch was named to the All-SEC freshman team after averaging 6.8 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.2 steals per game. As a senior, he was All-SEC first team as picked by the league’s coaches. He averaged 16.2 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.3 steals his final season.
          In his four seasons in Lexington, the Wildcats were 105-29, with three regular-season and three SEC tournament championships. In one of those tournament championship runs, he was named tournament MVP, averaging 19 points a game. He hit 8 three pointers in wins over Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
          Fitch played professionally for 13 seasons, mainly overseas, and was with the NBA champ Miami Heat during the 2005-2006 season. He received his degree from Kentucky in 2017.

George Foster
Southeast High School had a short shelf life and was in operation for a little more than a decade.
          During that time, from 1988-2003, the school produced just one major-college athlete and he was football player George Foster, an offensive lineman who would go on to start two seasons at the University of Georgia.
          A giant of a man who played in college at 6-5 and more than 330 pounds, he helped the Bulldogs to the 2002 SEC championship and their first 13-win season in school history, and a final No. 3 ranking in both major polls.
          Georgia averaged 32 points per game that season, and George was invited to play in the 2003 Senior Bowl.
          He was a first-round draft choice of the Denver Broncos in 2004 as the 20th overall pick, and spent three seasons at Denver, starting all 16 games in 2004 and 2005.
          During his professional career, which also included stints with the Lions, Browns, Saints and Colts, he played in 67 games with 57 starts.

Susie Gardner
          Since coming to Mercer, she has restored the pride in the Bears women’s basketball team that the school enjoyed at the beginning of the women’s program back in the early 1970s.
          In nine seasons at Mercer, the Mt. Juliet, Tenn. native has become the all-time winningest coach in program history with a 169-118 record. Her teams have won or shared four consecutive regular-season Southern Conference championships, and won tournament titles in 2018 and 2019 to secure bids in the NCAA tournament.
          They took a 27-game winning streak into the 2018 NCAA tournament before losing to Georgia in the first round.
          In 2018-19, Susie’s team had won 17 straight before being ousted by Iowa in a first-round NCAA game, 66-61.
          She is a two-time SoCon coach of the year, having won the award in both 2018 and 2019.
          Mercer currently has a 34-game regular-season Southern Conference winnng streak going.
          Before Mercer, Gardner was head coach at Austin Peay and at Arkansas. Her overall coaching record is 345-265 in 20 seasons as a head coach.
          A standout player at Georgia, Susie served as a graduate assistant at her alma mater and also as an assistant at San Diego State and at Florida.

Edith Hillman Gerhardt
          Edith joins her late son Al as a member of the Hall. Al, who played football at Lanier and at Georgia Tech, was inducted in 2007.
          Edith was voted the best athlete at Miller Girls High School both her junior and senior years, excelling in both basketball and tennis.
          She was the Wesleyan College tennis champion both her freshman and sophomore years.
          After transferring to Mercer, she played basketball and tennis for the Bears. Her senior year, Mercer’s tennis team went undefeated.
          She is a member of Mercer’s Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1938, the Mercer Cluster newspaper rated her as the best all-around athlete in Macon.
          After college, she played semi-professional basketball for the Peeler Hardware Red Devils. She also went on to win women’s singles championships of the Middle Georgia Tennis Association numerous times in the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s.

Michael Mimbs
          Mimbs is one of the finest baseball players to come out of Macon.
          After a stellar career at Windsor Academy, he played at Mercer for Macon Sports Hall of Fame member Barry Myers.
          He was picked in the 24th round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1990.
          Mimbs made his way to the major leagues in 1995 with the Phillies after moving around a bit and spent three years with the big-league club, appearing in 73 games with 37 starts.
          In his second major league start against the Atlanta Braves, he allowed just one hit in six innings in picking up a win against his home-state team.
          During his time in the majors, Mimbs pitched 264.2 innings while compiling a 12-19 record and a 5.03 era.

John Rocker
          While with the FPD Vikings in the early 1990s, he pitched three no-hitters for the baseball team, a preview of things to come for the hard-throwing left-hander.
          He signed to pitch for Georgia, but opted to play professional baseball in the Atlanta Braves organization after being drafted in 1993.
          After four seasons in the minor leagues, including a stint with the Macon Braves, he was called up to the majors in 1998 and immediately made his mark.
          That first season, he went 1-3 with a 2.13 era in 32.1 innings pitched. In 1999, he moved into the closer’s role after Kerry Lightenburg was put on the DL after an injury. Rocker responded with 38 saves and a 2.49 era while finishing with a 4-5 record. In 2000, Rocker had 24 saves with a 2.89 era and a 1-2 record.
          He was traded to the Cleveland Indians in 2001 and had a 3-7 record and a 5.45 era for the Indians, who made it to the AL playoffs that season.
          Rocker also played for Tampa Bay and Texas in the majors and with the Long Island Ducks Independent League team before retiring in 2005.

Jimmy Turner
          Turner is a Bibb County coaching legend.
          He spent 33 seasons mentoring young baseball and softball players, with 32 of those spent at FPD, except for one season as head baseball coach at Houston County.
          As a softball coach for the Vikings, he compiled a 257-105 career coaching mark that included seven region titles and eight visits to the Final four. His 2007 FPD squad won the GISA state title.
          His baseball record is just as impressive, going 370-216 with GISA state titles in 1992 and 2010. He also captured 10 region titles in the GISA and GHSA.
          Turner was an outstanding baseball player in his own right. He was a star shortstop at Lanier High School before going on to Georgia on a baseball scholarship.
          In Athens, he was a four-year letter-winner, captain of the 1973 team, and a member of the All-SEC academic team in 1974.
          Turner was drafted by Cincinnati in the 26th round and played in Billings, Mont., Seattle, Wash., and Tampa, Florida.