AHS Athletic
     Hall of Fame
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  JAMES "SONNY" BRABSON    GRADUATED 1967     INDUCTED 2010

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JAMES "SONNY" BRABSON          AHS Class of 1967
          When you talk about the greatness of Alliance High School basketball and many great Aviators who have played the sport, the name James “Sonny” Brabson is one of the first to be mentioned. Brabson is a 1967 AHS graduate and was an outstanding athlete.  He participated in two sports at Alliance, basketball and track.  Later in life, he was also a Slo-Pitch Softball standout.
            “Sonny” was a captain for the Aviators’ basketball team and received the Most Valuable Player Award.  He was a 6’ 2” forward and a two-year starter for the Aviators under head coach Dick Brockett.
            The Aviators were a combined 30-11 in Brabson’s two years as a starter, highlighted by a 17-5 record during his senior season. Alliance advanced all the way to the Class AA district title game before losing 64 to 56 to Canton Lincoln in front of 5,169 fans at the Canton Auditorium. Lincoln went on to the state tournament that year.
            In his two years as a starter, Brabson played in 37 games and scored 491 points and averaged 13.3 points per game. His senior year, he played in 22 games, scored 300 points and averaged 13.6 ppg. He was the third leading scorer on well-balanced AHS team which also featured Ed Osley and AJ Thigpen. He scored 22 points in a 70-62 win over New Philadelphia that year and he grabbed a single-game high 19 rebounds in a 68-65 win over West Branch.  Brabson scored in double figures in his last 13 games at AHS.
            His career single-game high was 25 points during his junior year when Alliance defeated Akron Garfield 56-43 and finished 13-6 that season.
            Brabson was a key part in Alliance’s basketball turnaround.  His senior year, he helped lead AHS’s 60-59 win over perennial state power Canton McKinley, which just three years earlier had defeated the Aviators, 103-33.
            After AHS graduation, Brabson served in the United States Army.
            Talented in many sports, he was inducted into the Greater Canton Slo-Pitch Softball Hall of Fame in 2007.
            Brabson and his wife, Angernell, live in Alliance.  They have a daughter Kertease Brabson and a son, the late James Kenneth Brabson.  He also has a stepson, Leslie Tucker.  He has three grandchildren, Ra-queal Brabson, Kertisha Brabson and Dazzle Hawkins and four great grandchildren.  His sister Helen also lives in Alliance.  Sonny’s other sister, Mary Alice Jenkins is deceased.