NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and Athletic Director Candice Storey Lee today announced the 14 former student-athletes and administrators who comprise the Vanderbilt Athletics Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025.
Just as current Commodores continue to reach unprecedented heights and write new chapters in an athletics story more than a century old, this year’s Hall of Fame class helped pave the way by proving excellence is possible at Vanderbilt.
Representing seven sports and administration, and spanning more than 100 years of Vanderbilt history, these individuals broke records, competed for championships, played their sport at the highest level, served their country and embodied the Vanderbilt Way. Ten living inductees and four posthumous honorees will be recognized at the Feb. 20, 2026, induction ceremony at the Student Life Center on campus.
This year’s class includes:
- Michelle Allen, lacrosse
- Bob Asher, football
- Wendy Deacon, swimming
- Christina Foggie, women’s basketball
- Tony Kemp, baseball
- Tony Kuhn, men’s soccer
- Ryan Lipman, men’s tennis
- Allama Matthews, football
- Ronnie McMahan, men’s basketball
- Jamie Winborn, football
Posthumous Inductees:
- Rabbit Curry, football
- Jack Jenkins, football
- Phil King, football
- Madison Sarratt, university administration
Michelle Allen, lacrosse
The 30th anniversary of Vanderbilt’s trailblazing lacrosse program is a fitting opportunity to honor the program’s first All-American and a member of the first Final Four team.
Allen transferred to Vanderbilt in 2001 ahead of her sophomore year and quickly established herself as the cornerstone of a program looking to take the next step after gaining varsity status in 1996.
Allen led the Commodores in assists and points as both a junior and senior, as well as ground balls as a junior and draw controls as a senior. She was named the American Lacrosse Conference Player of the Year and earned All-America honors in 2004, when she was also one of three captains on the team that won 12 games, upset No. 4 overall seed Loyola (Md.) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and went on to reach the national semifinals.
Bob Asher, football
An All-American and team captain, offensive lineman Bob Asher was a mainstay on the only Vanderbilt team in nearly three decades to beat Bear Bryant’s Alabama.
Asher escaped the anonymity that often befalls the offensive line in 1968, when the junior earned second-team All-SEC honors. A year later, he took center stage, honored as a first-team All-SEC selection and an All-American by multiple organizations, including first-team honors from the Central Press Association. On Oct. 11, 1969, Asher and the Commodores beat Bryant’s Crimson Tide 14-10, Vanderbilt last’s win in the series until 1984.
Selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round of the 1970 NFL Draft, he was part of the team that played in Super Bowl VI. He played five NFL seasons for the Cowboys and New York Giants and was named an SEC Football Legend in 1995.
Wendy Deacon, swimming
One of the most decorated swimmers in school history and the 1989 Vanderbilt Female Athlete of the Year, Deacon joins Ming Hsu (Robinson) as women’s swimming legends enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Deacon enjoyed a breakout sophomore season in 1987, earning first-team All-SEC honors. She remains the only Vanderbilt swimmer to earn first-team distinction, after becoming the only SEC individual champion in school history when she won the 100-yard backstroke. She also earned CSCAA first-team and NCAA second-team All-America honors in 1987.
Deacon went on to become the first—and still only—Commodore to qualify for the NCAA Swimming Championships in three consecutive seasons, adding second-team All-America honors in 1989.
Christina Foggie, women’s basketball
The last time Memorial Gymnasium rocked as loudly as it does these days, Christina Foggie had probably just drained another 3-pointer en route to another NCAA Tournament.
In a women’s basketball program with no shortage of scoring legends, past and present, only six Commodores ever scored more career points than Foggie’s 1,743 between 2011–14. Little wonder the Dores amassed a mighty 82-47 record while she was on campus.
Foggie was a first-team All-SEC selection in 2012 and 2014, also earning WBCA all-region honors in both seasons. The program’s all-time leader in 3-pointers, she matched a then-program record with eight against Virginia in 2012 and made seven in a game on three occasions. Never afraid of contact, she ranks sixth in career free throws. She was selected by the Minnesota Lynx in the second round of the 2014 WNBA Draft.
Tony Kemp, baseball
Tim Corbin’s VandyBoys were already building toward something special when Tony Kemp arrived on campus, but it’s also not entirely a coincidence that the team’s first trip to Omaha for the College World Series followed soon thereafter.
A star from the start, Kemp was the 2011 SEC Freshman of the Year, first-team Freshman All-American and first-team All-SEC selection in his debut season, hitting .329 with a .434 on-base percentage. Even more accolades followed, highlighted by being named SEC Player of the Year in 2013 after hitting .391 with a .956 OPS. He was also honored that season with first-team All-America, first-team All-SEC, All-SEC Defensive Team, SEC All-Tournament Team and College World Series All-Tournament Team accolades. His 104 hits in 2013 are tied for the fourth-best single-season total in program history.
Selected by the Houston Astros in the fifth round of the 2013 MLB Draft, Kemp played more than 700 games with the Astros, Chicago Cubs, Oakland Athletics and Baltimore Orioles. Noted for his significant community work in Nashville and around the country, Kemp was a four-time Roberto Clemente Award nominee with the A’s.
Tony Kuhn, men’s soccer
Part of a generation that helped pave the way for stable, thriving professional men’s soccer in the United States, Kuhn was the most highly decorated player in the history of Vanderbilt’s men’s soccer program.
Playing under legendary head coach Randy Johnson, Hall of Fame Class of 2022, Kuhn set single-season (23) and career goal (58) and assists (27) records for the Commodores. With Kuhn often leading the attack from 1994–97, Vanderbilt compiled a 42-28-7 record, among the winningest four-year stretches in program history, and won the 1996 Sun Belt Conference regular season championship. He was honored as an NSCAA first-team All-American in 1996 and second-team All-American in 1997.
Selected by the Nashville Metros in the first round of the 1998 United Soccer League Draft, Kuhn went on to play for the Chicago Fire and New England Revolution in Major League Soccer, as well as in the Premier Development League and USL-A League.
Ryan Lipman, men’s tennis
Ryan Lipman completed his time at Vanderbilt with more combined singles and doubles victories than any men’s tennis student-athlete in program history. That’s quite a legacy.
Lipman still ranks second in career combined wins, fifth in singles and fourth in doubles. He was named the SEC Freshman of the Year, ITA Ohio Valley Region Rookie Player of the Year and received first-team All-SEC honors in 2010, then was a first-team All-SEC selection as a sophomore.
But the Nashville native’s most impressive feats came after an injury that cost him his entire junior year. Returning to the court, Lipman earned first-team All-SEC honors for the third time in 2013, second-team All-SEC honors in 2014 and first-team All-America honors in 2013 (singles) and 2014 (singles and doubles). Far from one-dimensional, he was also honored as the ITA Ohio Valley Region Arthur Ashe Award winner in 2013 and 2014.
Allama Matthews, football
Prior to Matthews arriving in 1979, Vanderbilt hadn’t averaged more than 178 passing yards per game in any season since the advent of detailed records in the 1940s. It’s no coincidence that a new era dawned while he was catching passes.
Hauling in throws from Whit Taylor, Matthews was an All-American and first-team All-SEC selection in 1982. His four touchdown catches against Virginia Tech that year stood as the program’s single-game record for 23 years, until finally bested by Earl Bennett. No one has caught, if you will, Matthews when it comes to his single-season record 14 touchdown catches in 1982. He departed as Vanderbilt’s all-time leader in touchdown receptions and still ranks sixth on that list. He was named an SEC Legend in 2022.
Selected by the Atlanta Falcons in the 12th round of the 1983 NFL Draft, Matthews earned his place on the roster and played three seasons in the league.
Ronnie McMahan, men’s basketball
A starter in 114 of his 124 career appearances for the Commodores, Ronnie McMahan ranks fifth in program history with 1,719 career points—and was second only to Phil Cox at the time he played his final game in 1995. Arriving in Nashville just five years after the 3-pointer was formally adopted in NCAA basketball, he excelled from long range and still ranks third in program history in career 3-pointers and ninth in single-season 3-pointers. He also ranks seventh in program history in career steals.
McMahan excelled as part of an ensemble supporting leading scorer Billy McCaffrey during the 1993 Sweet 16 run, then effortlessly transitioned into the leading role by the time he averaged 18.3 points per game as a senior. The Middle Tennessee native who starred at McMinn High School has remained a basketball fixture in the area as Associate Dean of 9th and 10th Grade and a basketball and football coach at Montgomery Bell Academy.
Jamie Winborn, football
When Jamie Winborn lined up on Saturdays, “forward ever” applied only to the team in Black and Gold.
A fearsome linebacker who didn’t wait for opponents to get to the line of scrimmage, Winborn is Vanderbilt’s all-time and single-season leader in tackles for loss. The Wetumpka, Alabama, product also recorded the fifth-most sacks in a single season for the Commodores and led the team in tackles and tackles for loss in back-to-back seasons, 1998–99. A Football News second-team All-American in 1999, he was a consensus AP and Coaches first-team All-SEC selection that season. He also earned first-team All-SEC honors in 2000 and second-team All-SEC and SEC All-Freshman honors in 1998.
Selected in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft, Winborn played 10 NFL seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos and Tennessee Titans. He was named an SEC Legend in 2023.
The following people will be inducted posthumously:
Posthumous Inductees
Rabbit Curry, football
A football star and member of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame whose life was cut short in one of the 20th century’s great cataclysms, Irby “Rabbit” Curry’s legacy of athletic excellence and patriotic service lives on more than a century later.
Curry first took the field for Vanderbilt in 1914 during one of the vanishingly rare lulls in legendary coach Dan McGugin’s dominance. But thanks in no small part to their quarterback from Marlin, Texas, who became known as the “Spirit of Vanderbilt,” the Commodores went 16-2-1 across the 1915–16 seasons. He earned All-Southern Conference honors in each season, in addition to Walter Camp All-America honors in 1916.
With parts of the globe engulfed in World War I, Curry left Vanderbilt and trained as a pilot upon the United States entry into the conflict in 1917. On August 10, 1918, just two months shy of the armistice, he was killed when his plane was shot down in France. Vanderbilt’s “Curry Field,” home of the Commodore football team before the construction of Dudley Field in 1922, was named in his honor.
Jack Jenkins, football
The first Commodore selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, Jack Jenkins put his bright football future on hold to serve his country in World War II.
Raised in Texarkana, Texas, Jenkins arrived at Vanderbilt when the football program was still searching for its next chapter after an early era defined by Dan McGugin. Playing for head coach Red Sanders, Jenkins helped deliver the answer. A running back who also handled kicking duties, Jenkins was an All-American and SEC MVP for an 8-2 team in 1941. Jenkins totaled 90 points (12 TD, 1 FG, 15 PAT), a single-season program record that stood until 2013. A back-to-back first-team All-SEC selection 1941-42, he also won the SEC Jacobs Blocking Trophy in both years.
Drafted No. 10 overall by Washington in the 1943 NFL Draft, he played two games as a rookie before serving the next two years in the military during World War II. He returned to the NFL when the conflict ended and played two more seasons with Washington. He was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2025.
Phil King, football
At a time when the running game still reigned supreme in college football, Phil King owned the turf on Saturdays at Dudley Field.
King led the Commodores in rushing for three consecutive seasons, 1955–57. He remains one of just five players to accomplish that since World War II. For good measure, he also led in receiving, punt return and kickoff return yards—and returned an interception 54 yards for a touchdown—in 1957, putting together one of the most statistically dominant seasons in program history as a captain of a 5-3-2 team. Prior to that, he was part of the 1955 team that beat Auburn in the Gator Bowl, Vanderbilt’s last bowl win until 2008.
A two-time All-SEC honoree at Vanderbilt, King played in the Blue-Gray Classic and Senior Bowl before the New York Giants selected him No. 12 overall in the 1958 NFL Draft. After an outstanding debut season, he was named the NFL’s Rookie of the Year, the first and still only former Commodore to achieve that distinction. He played nine NFL seasons with the Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings. He was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1996.
Madison Sarratt, administration
A beloved university administrator whose influence reached to every corner of campus and student life, earning him the “Mr. Vanderbilt” sobriquet, Sarratt helped shape intercollegiate athletics at Vanderbilt and throughout the SEC and NCAA.
Sarratt arrived at Vanderbilt in 1916, when Rabbit Curry was in his gridiron heyday, and he remained a regular on campus until his death in 1978—little more than a year before Allama Matthews took the field for the first time. A math instructor by training, he not only taught in and eventually chaired that department but served in roles up to and including acting chancellor in 1946. Always an advocate for athletics, he served on the university’s athletics committee for more than 35 years, much of that time as its chairman—essentially an athletic director before that position existed. During his career, he also helped shape the SEC from its 1932 founding and served in a variety of roles with the conference and NCAA.
He was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1967.
