HALL OF FAME: Two local volleyball coaches are regarded as two of the best in the state, and are now included in the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame

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The 2025 inductees into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Melanie Donahoo is pictured front row, second from left. Tanya Broadway is pictured front row, third from left.

BY BOB LABBE | PHOTOS BY JOSHUA BERRY |LIVING 50 PLUS

Friends, co-workers, rivals and Hall of Famers. Each of these descriptions match the incredible lives of Tanya Wigley Broadway and Melanie Donahoo two of the most outstanding high school volleyball coaches in the history of Alabama high school athletics.

With over 60-years of coaching experience and 12 Alabama State Championships between them, Broadway and Donahoo are regarded as the cream of the crop. Both were inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022, and most recently, among 12 individuals inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame in a special black-tie ceremony held in Montgomery.

“This was a big honor for me, matter of fact, the biggest for me in my coaching career as I was extremely proud to be nominated and even more proud to be enshrined among the best of the best,” said Broadway, who was a two-sport star in basketball and volleyball at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) graduating in 1994 Magna Cum Laude.

“I’ve been blessed as I had some wonderful, good people around me and so many great players who bought in with what I was trying to do as I established a foundation of leadership in every team I’ve coached,” added Donahoo, who also was a scholarship athlete at UAH playing basketball graduating in 1994.

As teammates playing for the UAH Lady Chargers basketball team, Broadway and Donahoo became friends, but Broadway also played volleyball for the school and that schedule cut into their time together. Once graduated, both began their coaching careers with Broadway mostly centering in on volleyball at Huntsville’s Grissom High while Donahoo joined the teaching and coaching force at nearby Whitesburg Middle School taking on the responsibilities of coaching both boys and girls basketball and, for the first time, the school’s volleyball team. Her success came quickly as her volleyball teams won the City Championship twice in three years before she trekked down into the Jones Valley portion of Huntsville to Grissom High where she joined the volleyball coaching staff as an assistant to Broadway with the squad that finished state runner-up. Just after the close of the season she was offered the head coach position for volleyball at Huntsville High where she remains today.