Ronnie Beavers played every sport available to him in each of his four years at East Fannin High School from the fall of 1969 until his graduation in the spring of 1973. He has continued his participation in athletics beyond high school and continues to play softball at an advanced level of competition. Ronnie’s body of work in athletics has earned him a ticket for admission to the Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2019.
Ronnie grew up in Morganton, one of 9 children of Clifford and Ethel Beavers. Seven of the Beavers children were boys and all seven played football at East Fannin High School, beginning with Charles in 1957 and ending with Steve in 1975.
Ronnie was the recipient of a team award in each of his four seasons. As a freshman in 1969 he was named as the team Most Valuable Lineman. The honors continued when he earned the basketball Sportsmanship award as a sophomore, the Best Offensive Football Player as a junior and finally as the football Most Valuable Player as a senior. He was selected as a co-captain of the football and baseball teams as both a junior and as a senior.
Although he played all sports, Ronnie is quick to point out that football was his first love. While at East Fannin he generally played for teams that consisted of no more than 15-18 players. He played both offense and defense and seldom left the field of battle during a game. At various times during his football career he played center, offensive lineman, defensive end, cornerback, linebacker and fullback. He weighed in at a solid 220 pounds during his senior season. He was quick and loved contact.
Although victories were rare for the East Fannin football teams, Ronnie remembers two games with special fondness. In 1970, the Wildcats rose to the occasion and dominated a favored Union County team to the tune of 32-12. During Ronnie’s senior season of 1972, East Fannin finished with a record of two wins and eight losses. The losses came in the first eight games of the season and all of the games were very close. The memorable win came in the 9th game of the season when Ronnie Beavers and his East Fannin Wildcat teammates managed to defeat arch-rival Copper Basin 13-12 in the only victory that East Fannin ever recorded in that series. In the finale of the 1972, the Wildcats captured their second victory of the season with a 24-0 thrashing of Hiwassee Dam.
Ronnie Beavers was selected to the Atlanta Journal/Constitution Georgia Class B All-State honorable mention team following his senior campaign in 1972. At the end of his senior year, his classmates at East Fannin elected him as the Most Athletic senior boy.
An early mentor in Ronnie’s athletic life was Fannin County Sports Hall of Famer, Fred Ganues. Fred was an avid East Fannin supporter and felt that Ronnie had the ability to continue his football career at the college level. He encouraged Ronnie and used his network of contacts in the sporting community to spread the word about his athletic ability. Unfortunately, East Fannin was a very small school and did not produce very good football teams. Funds for the athletic programs were scarce and East Fannin teams received very little publicity in the local or state media. When college coaches asked for game films of Ronnie’s performances they were informed that the school did not have the financial wherewithal to produce luxuries such as films of the games.
Ronnie received recruiting letters from several schools including the University of Tennessee. At the end of the day, however, no firm offers of financial aid were forthcoming. He was invited to go to Knoxville as a ‘preferred walk-on’ but in the intercollegiate athletics world of 1973, no scholarship help was given to walk-ons. The Beavers family was not in a position to fund Ronnie’s college education until he could show the UT coaches what he could do, so the football career of Ronnie Beavers ended with the final East Fannin game of 1972.
After graduation he set out for Atlanta where he worked for a while before he landed a job with the L&N Railroad in Chatsworth, Georgia. He was soon transferred to Blue Ridge and remained with L&N for more than 30 years.
Ronnie began playing slow-pitch softball with teams sponsored and coached by Fred Ganues in the early 1970s. He continued to play the game and remains active with a seniors squad in Maryville, Tennessee some 47 years later. During his softball career, Ronnie has played for several ASA, USSSA and ISSA teams. He played with the Fannin County Generals team from 2005 until 2014 seasons and led them to four championships in the Blairsville Recreational Softball League. He was a member of two Class A Church League teams that won Tennessee State Championships in the 1990s.
In addition to his softball activities, Ronnie Beavers stays active with several hobbies including riding his motorcycles, ice sculpturing and photography. He lives in Maryville with his wife Karen and their basset hound, Sadie. Ronnie says that he has several parcels of land in Fannin County and hopes to build a retirement home in his native county in the not too distant future. He is also a charter member of the Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame Board and devotes considerable time to Hall of Fame activities.
