NORFOLK, VA—Former defensive standout and Super Bowl winner Chartric Darby and Charlene Johnson, a former player and coach who also spent 10 years as Bulldog athletics director, were among five who was inducted into the 2018 Mid-Eastern Athletic Thursday (March 8^th ) during a Hall of Fame Brunch at the Sheraton Waterside Hotel in Norfolk, VA.

Johnson and Darby became the 20^th and 21^st MEAC Hall of Fame inductees from SC State, the most of any league school.

The MEAC Hall of Fame highlights former student-athletes, coaches, university and conference administrators, as well as special contributors, who have enriched the legacy of the conference since its inception in 1970. Enshrinees were selected by a 13-person committee made up of administrators and representatives from member institutions.
 
The inaugural Hall of Fame class was inducted on May 29, 1981 during a 10-year anniversary banquet in Greensboro, N.C. Since its establishment, the MEAC Hall of Fame has enshrined 143 people, including the class of 2018.
 
The 2018 MEAC Hall of Fame Inductees

 Chartric Darby, South Carolina State: Chartric "Chuck" Darby is hailed as one of the best defensive players in South Carolina State football history. A four-year starter from 1994-97, he was named First Team All-MEAC (1996 and 1997). Darby was also named an All-American in 1997 by The Sporting News and the Sheridan Broadcasting Network. He set school and MEAC records for career sacks with 40.5, and his 22 sacks in 1997 are also a school record. During Darby's playing days, the Bulldogs went a combined 29-15 – including a 10-2 mark in 1994, when South Carolina State defeated Grambling State in the Heritage Bowl and were named Black College National Champions. He was the Heritage Bowl Defensive Player of the Game after recording five sacks in that contest, and Darby was inducted into the South Carolina State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2007, he was named to the Bulldog Centennial Football Team. Darby signed as a free agent with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2001, spending four seasons with the team and winning Super Bowl XXXVII. In an 11-year NFL career, Darby also played for the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions.
 
Charlene Johnson, South Carolina State: Charlene Johnson played basketball for South Carolina State University, helping the Lady Bulldogs win the 1979 AIAW National Championship, but after graduating, she gave over three decades of service to the university as an administrator. In addition to serving as an assistant coach with the women's basketball program, Johnson was also head coach of the volleyball and women's tennis programs, becoming the first woman to serve as a full-time head coach at South Carolina State. She was the 1986 MEAC Coach of the Year in tennis, and she was named the conference's Coach of the Year in volleyball in 1990 after leading the Lady Bulldogs to their first MEAC championship. Johnson also served the university as Associate Athletics Director and Senior Woman Administrator, and she twice served as Interim Director of Athletics before being named to the position on a permanent basis in 2004. She served as Director of Athletics at her alma mater for 11 years, the first woman to serve in that capacity at the school and the first woman to serve as Chairperson of the MEAC's Directors of Athletics. A 1998 inductee into the South Carolina State Athletic Hall of Fame, Johnson served on both the NCAA Div. I Football Championship Committee and the Women's Volleyball Championship Committee.





Picture (l-r) – MEAC Delegate Assembly President Carla Lester of Bethune-Cookman, SCSU's Chartric Darby,
Jay Walker of Howard, SCSU's Charlene Johnson, Nick Collins of Bethune-Cookman and MEAC Commissioner
Dennis Thomas. Inductee JaNina Lee of Morgan State was unable to attend the ceremony.