Before he was a Cincinnati Bengal, he was an Oak Ridge Wildcat.

Tee Higgins spent the Cincinnati Bengals’ bye weekend in Oak Ridge. He was one of three people inducted into the Oak Ridge Sports Hall of Fame during a ceremony on Blankenship Field Oct. 20 during halftime of the Oak Ridge High School-Lenoir City football game. ORHS beat Lenoir City 30-12. The Wildcats are now Region 3-5a champs.

Also inducted were ORHS’ winningest football coach, Joe Gaddis, who now serves as the school’s athletic director; and Kara Pearson Price, a 2001 ORHS graduate described on the Hall of Fame website as an “outstanding three-sport (soccer, tennis, and track) athlete and leader.“

Under Gaddis’ leadership, the Oak Ridge Wildcats football teams had 196 wins and 58 losses, according to information at the Hall of Fame website. He’s the fifth winningest head coach in Tennessee high school football history with 334 wins and 146 losses He was head coach of the 1991 ORHS state championship football team. Gaddis was inducted into the Tennessee Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2018.

Higgins, a 2017 ORHS grad, was a standout in both football and basketball in high school. He scored 18 touchdowns and had 68 receptions for 1,044 yards during his senior year. He was a five-star recruit and played college football at Clemson University, which won the national championship in 2019. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 2020, where he continues to play.

Now a board-certified nurse family practitioner, Price has a long list of accolades in soccer, tennis and track.

In soccer, she played varsity all four years at ORHS and was voted to the All-District and All-Region teams each year. She was ORHS team captain her 10th, 11th, and 12th year. She won a soccer scholarship the University of Alabama at Huntsville. While there, she was team captain three years and voted Most Valuable Player two years.

In tennis, she helped ORHS win a state championship her freshman year, winning all her matches. She was a team captain her senior year in track, as well as being a a member of the third-place 3200 meter relay team in the state meet.

The Oak Ridger’s News Editor Donna Smith covers Oak Ridge area news. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter@ridgernewsed. 

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