William Partlow is one of 10 of the newest inductees into the prestigious South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame. Primarily recognized as a ground-breaking high school basketball coach, Partlow also served as head basketball coach and Athletic Director at Benedict College for seven years.
“It was a great time at Benedict, because they had all those buildings going up, and they had a marvelous president back then in Ben Payton,” Partlow said during Monday’s press conference prior to the induction banquet at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
After eight successful
years as head basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School, where he won five state championships, he was recruited to come to Benedict as head men’s basketball coach and athletic director.
Partlow left Benedict to become the first African-American athletic director at San Francisco State, where he served for 18 years before retiring.
During his successful high school coaching career, Partlow is known for coaching players who later themselves went on to be very successful coaches. The long list includes South Carolina legendary high school coach George Glymph, and Carl Williams, who won three high school championships at three different schools. At San Francisco State, he hired two young football coaches who later went on to great success in the NFL – Andy Reid, who has won three Super Bowls, and Mike Holmgren, who won one Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers.
