Coach Don Anderson will be inducted into the Taylorville High School Sports Halt of Fame. Saturday night, November 8, 1997 at a community banquet to be held in St Vincent's Memorial Hospital Auditorium.

For fifteen seasons, Don Anderson guided the Taylorville Tornadoes Football program to 92 wins against 45 losses and 41 ties. During that time his teams won five conference championships and earned state playoff selection three times advancing to the second round in 1977,

Don Anderson began his career in football as a player at South High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was an all-conference guard and was selected to play in the Eastern Tennessee All-Star Game. At Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Anderson lettered three years in football and one year in track.

Coach Anderson began his coaching career as an assistant for four years at Shawnee High School in Louisville, Kentucky then became head coach for two years at Bridgeport, Illinois followed by two years at Duquoin. He became head coach of the Tornadoes in 1968.

During his first thirteen years. Taylorville was in the Mid-State State Conference and Coach Anderson led the Tornadoes to a 91% winning percentage, winning 71, losing 17 and tying 2.

Highlights of his illustrious career at Taylorville include his first game against Don Klosterman and the highly touted Effingham Flaming Flearts, where his Tornadoes entered the game a decided underdog and came away with a 50-0 win. The 1977 team beat Mascoutah in the first round 15-0 holding them to only two first downs, which still stand as a playoff record. That team lost to eventual state champion Metemora in the second round. Probably his most disappointing event at THS, was to find out from IHSA, after leading his Tornadoes to an 8-1 season, that they still did not qualify for the playoffs. The result of this "loophole" caused a change in future selection procedures.

Coach Anderson, seeing a need to develop a strong developmental program, to feed into the high school team, was instrumental in starting the junior football program Taylorville, which is now grown into the successful Emil Mayer Football League.

In April of 1991 Coach Anderson was inducted into the Illinois High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in Champaign. Since his retirement from active coaching, Don Anderson has continued to support the Tornadoes football program, providing color commentary for local radio broadcast for fourteen years and helping the current coaching staff in anyway they have asked.