Clint Castleberry is perhaps the greatest pre-World War II high school player in state history. Hestarted on three championship teams in the GIAA (highest classification) in 1939-41, duringwhich Boys High compiled a 32-1-3 record. Castleberry was the leading scorer for the 1941 team considered to be Georgia’s best of the first half of the 20th century. Throughout his career at Boys, he averaged 171 rushing yards per game and scored 102 total points. In college, he played at Georgia Tech for a single season and finished third in Heisman Trophy voting as a freshman while leading Tech to the Cotton Bowl and becoming the first underclassmen to receive All-SEC honors. On Oct. 3, 1942, the Castleberry-led Yellow Jackets defeated Notre Dame for the first time since 1928, giving the Fighting Irish their first loss in two years. Castleberry’s No. 19 remains the only football jersey to be retired at Georgia Tech. In 2007, the AJC named Castleberry the No. 2 high school football player in state history behind Herschel Walker. Castleberry is one of the five original inductees into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (1956) and one of only two athletes. An Army pilot during World War II, Castleberry was killed when his plane went down over West Africa in 1944 at age 21.
