Jackie Barnes

Jackie Barnes, a teacher and a coach at Taylorville High School for twenty-seven years will be honored and inducted into the Taylorville High School Sports Hall of Fame at a banquet this Saturday April 21, 2001.    Mrs. Barnes began teaching during the 1967-68 at. Taylorville High School as a part time Physical Education Teacher. She shared her teaching duties that first year with fellow hall of fame inductee, Joyce Wilcox. Mrs. Barnes taught in the mornings and Mrs. Wilcox in the afternoons. There were no girls' interscholastic sports in the last sixties, so Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Wilcox worked together sponsoring the GAA program at the high school, a position Mrs. Barnes assisted with until her retirement in 1993.    In 1974 Wilcox and Barnes started a girls' tennis team and a girls' track team through the GAA program in hopeful preparation for developing interscholastic teams. But it was in 1977 -78 that Mrs. Barnes coached the first Tornadoes interscholastic volleyball team. For eleven year, she developed the volleyball program into a highly competitive one, winning district championships in the 1977 - 1978 and the 1978 - 1979 seasons.

Mrs. Barnes was also the first coach of the girls tennis team, beginning that role in 1975. However, when , in 1978, the IHSA moved both tennis and volleyball into the fall., she turned the reins over to Mrs. Wilcox so she could stay with the volleyball program.

In 1984, Mrs. Barnes became the coach of the bowling team . For ten years, until her retirement in 1994, Mrs. Barnes directed and developed the girls' bowling program into formidable team.

In 1979, Mrs. Barnes became the assistant varsity and head junior varsity basketball coach during the inaugural year of girl's interscholastic basketball. As J.V. coach, she took first year players and guided them to a 13 - 1 record.

Mrs. Jackie Barnes, with her teaching and coaching partner Mrs. Joyce Wilcox, were not only pioneers in the development of girls' interscholastic athletics at Taylorville High School, they were the only coaches, sharing in the introduction of hundred's of girls to competitive track and field, bowling, tennis, volleyball and basketball as well as a variety of other activities through the GAA program. For twenty-six years, Jackie Barnes dedicated her time and her talent to the development of female athletes and girls sports teams at Taylorville High School.