It was quite a weekend for some of ETSU’s past athletes. The best in all the sports from ETSU over the past two decades came together this weekend at the Culp Center for this year’s Hall of Fame Inductions.
Together these athletes won 14 Southern Conference Championships while starting two sports here at ETSU, men’s golf and women’s basketball, and greatly affected the reputation of four other programs. They nearly all set some of ETSU’s greatest records.
Greg Dennis from the Class of 1993 still has his scoring record atop Bucs men’s basketball.
In four seasons Dennis was able to score an amazing 2,204 points. In doing this he racked up many other records including field goals made (808) and free throws made (505). He is also second all-time in blocked shots at 174, although this isn’t hard for a man who stands nearly 7 feet tall.
Dennis said his winning the SoCon Tournament MVP and being a member of the All-Tournament team three years in a row were nice, but now he is a family man with a daughter.
His daughter Courtney definitely didn’t mind the trips to Argentina when her dad played professionally there. Nor does she mind telling people who her dad is.
Between having the great Hall of Fame Coach Dave Walker and being a truly good athlete himself, Kevin Johnson made his mark on cross country and track at ETSU. In four years, Johnson was a six-time All-American.
Not only was he good at winning, but he was also a good athlete in sharing. Walker told a story of when Johnson was fixing to pass a teammate for first but instead slowed down and gave the teammate a push to the finish line.
Caring more about the team than himself, he allowed his teammate the first place finish.
Johnson went on to win two Southern Conference indoor titles and five other Southern Conference titles outdoors ranging from his back to back wins in the steeple chase to his 800 meter title.
Walker also talked about Johnson’s great ambitions. In trying to decide whether to join the team as a freshman he could run in one race, Johnson decided on the 10,000-meter race. Unfortunately, he got tired half way through going up a hill, and when Walker saw him he was walking the race.
Rex Kuramoto had much in common with his golf coach Fred Warren. Kuramoto lived in Hiroshima, Japan before going to Stillwater, Okla. Both began the year at University of Oklahoma in the golf program. At the time and even today Oklahoma is one of the best golf programs in the country. They both left Oklahoma for ETSU when it had no golf program at all.
Being named the 1990 SoCon Player of the Year was nice, and being named an All-American in back to back years is better, but what made Kuramoto liked by others was his determination.
Kuramoto went on to win the SoCon Individual Honors in 1990 and be named to the All-SoCon team three years in a row. As an amateur, he won both the Tennessee Amateur Tournament and the Rice Planters Championship.
After graduating from ETSU he continued playing on the professional level.
Gary Robinette also did a lot in his years here. In his senior year, he helped the Bucs to 39-7-1 record that included a national best 25 game winning streak. Robinette finished his senior year with a Conference leading 10 home runs and leading in RBIs with 53.
After graduating in 1980 Robinette was drafted by the Chicago White Sox.
Robinette had always enjoyed computers and after a few seasons with the White Sox, he went back to his true pastime in computers. He now has a job as vice president of information technology.
In fact while he played with the Bucs, he got the nickname “Igny,” short for ignorant. All he would talk about was how great computers were, and all his teammates used to think computers were ignorant.
Yaser Zaatini put all records to shame in men’s tennis in his four years here as a student. Athletic Director and then head coach of tennis Dave Mullins said Zaatini seemed to care about the team.
After graduating in 1993, Zaatini went on to play professionally, including appearances in the Davis Cup in 1994 and 1995.
But each summer Zaatini would bring kids to the camps at ETSU for Mullins to see, and he recommended many more players he knew that would help the tennis team excel.
Zaatini became the first player at ETSU to go to a NCAA tournament and the first player to ever win the Southern Conference Championship four times in a row.
Zaatini also was named an All-American in both 1992 and 1993 and is the only tennis player at ETSU to have achieved it.
He is now in his third year as the head coach of the men’s tennis team and won the conference championships last year.

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