Mount Holly HOF 2016 by SouthlakeChristianAcademy

Event Program

Opening Remarks ................................... Gary Neely

Presentation of Colors ............................ Rankin Safety Patrol

Pledge of Allegiance ............................... Rankin Safety Patrol

Singing of our National Anthem ........... Leslie Crist

Invocation .............................................. Rev. James Ford

Dinner

Welcome ................................................. Mayor Bryan Hough

Recognition of Special Guests ............... Eddie Wilson

Past Inductees

Corporate Sponsors

City and County Officials

Committee Members

Special Thanks

2016 MHSHOF Scholarships

Induction Ceremony

Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame Community Spirit Award

Sponsored by American & Efird ................ Scott Pope & James Allen

Presented to Aaron Goforth

Barry Grice ............................................. Gary Neely

Derek Spears ........................................... James Ford

Stephanie Frazier .................................... Aaron Suttenfield

Jerry Brooks ............................................ Doug Smith

1991 East Gaston Wrestling .................... Doug Smith

Closing Remarks .................................... Gary Neely

MHHS Song ........................................... Eddie Wilson

EGHS Song ............................................ James Ford

Hall of Fame Committee

President - Gary Neely

Treasurer - Aaron Suttenfield

Secretary - Eddie Wilson

Committee Members - Scott Pope, James Ford, Doug Smith, and Ray Campbell

Hall of Fame Committee

Committee Members from (left to right) Gary Neely, James Ford, Scott Pope, Aaron Suttenfield, Eddie Wilson, Ray Campbell. — Photograph courtesy of Mount Holly Hall of Fame * Doug Smith was unavailable for photo *

2016 MHSHOF Scholarships

2016 MHSHOF

Scholarship

Winners & Sponsors

Ryan Anderson, EGHS will be attending WCU

Bob & Marguerite Rondall Scholarship

2016 MHSHOF Scholarships

Individual Endowment Opportunities Are Available

Guidelines for Applications

The MHSHOF scholarship is awarded on the basis of a competitive process that considers academic achievement, extracurricular and community involvement and financial need.

Four five hundred dollar scholarships will be paid directly to the recipient’s school, where the student must be enrolled and in good standing.

To be considered for this scholarship, applicants must meet the following criteria:

• A high school senior.

• Maintain a GPA of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.

• Applied to a credited college or university.

• Must not be a dependent of a member of the board of the MHSHOF or of the guidance department.

• Must not be a recipient of a major scholarship of $3000 or more from another source.

Purpose and Process

The purpose of the MHSHOF Scholarship is to provide college funds to deserving students with financial need. The scholarship is paid directly to the recipient’s school for tuition. The recipient supplies the information needed to submit the payment.

Application Process

Applications must be submitted on or by April 1 to the Guidance Department at East Gaston High School and Stuart Cramer High School.

* Individual Endorsement Opportunities are Available

Past Inductees

2007

Coach Delmer Wiles

Robert Black

2008

Arthur Davis

Bearl Davis

Max Davis

Wilbern Davis

Bertha Dunn

George Fincher

Neb Hollis

2009

Coach Dick Thompson

Vivian Laye Broome

Tommy Wilson

Don Killian

Ray Campbell

1963 MHHS Football Team

2010

Joe Huffstetler

John Farrar

Coach Joe Spears

Johnny Wike

1990 East Gaston Wrestling Team

Community Spirit Award Winner

Dwight Frady

2011

Bruce Bolick

Wayne Bolick

Frank Love

Perry Toomey

Scott Stewart

T.L. McManus

Jim McManus

Samuel “Dink” McManus

Community Spirit Award Winner

John Lewis

2012

Larry Hartsell

Freddy Whitt

Dawn Moose

Ronnie Harrison, Sr.

William Outen

1967 MHHS Football Team

Community Spirit Award Winner

Bobby John Rhyne

2013

J.B. Thompson

Charlie “Poss” Drumm

Doug Smith

Shane Trull

1940’s MHHS Hawkettes Basketball

1960’s MHHS Hawkettes Basketball

Community Spirit Award Winner

Sarah Nixon

2014

Lois Herring Parker

A.C. Hollar

Larry Lawing

Eddie Wilson

Tracy Black

Richard Dill

Community Spirit Award Winner

Buddie Hodges

2015

Zeb McDowell

Max Sherrill

Phil Roberts

Laura Randall Woodhead

1954-55 Hawks Baseball

1967-68 & 1968-69

Hawks Basketball

Community Spirit Award Winner

Barry Jessen

School Songs

2016 Community Spirit Award

AAron Goforth

Somewhere in a box, Aaron Goforth’s NASCAR memories are stored on VHS tapes, antique reminders of trips from Riverside, Calif., to Daytona, to North Wilksboro and a blur of map specks that were not Mount Holly.

He was a tire specialist for important people – Cale Yarborough, Buddy Baker, Bobby and Davey Allison – but the other important people, his wife and kids, were home in Gaston County while his job whizzed by at 190 miles per hour.

“I’d miss so much of Little Aaron’s baseball games, and in the summers on those weekends, I was gone,” he says, of his oldest son’s youth leagues. “And I didn’t want that with (younger son) Billy. And the NASCAR work was getting

physically harder, so I gave that up and was here for Billy.”

Instead of deciding what race car tires to switch, he decided what baseball fields needed fixing. Instead of making new tires in sets, he made new roofs for dugouts. And instead of telling race teams about circumference and air pressure, he told Little League players how to swing, how to run and how to have good sportsmanship.

For all he’s done for sports in Mount Holly, Goforth is the recipient of the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame 2016 Community Spirit Award.

“I still feel like there’re a lot more folks more deserving than I am. All I did was work on the fields and batting cages and the dugouts,” he says. “It was for the kids. Not only my kids but for all the boys and girls that came after them. I enjoyed it. I look around now and see some of the kids I coached who have grown up to be very successful, and I’m very proud of them.”

Goforth served in the Army from 1968 to 1970, at Fort Bragg and Fort Jackson, S.C. He received his orders for Vietnam, but was kept stateside. In addition to NASCAR, he worked as a mechanic for Duke Power at several of its locations – South Boulevard, Little Rock Road, Wilkinson Boulevard and the Toddville garage. He had a shop at his home, where he worked on cars and trucks.

Goforth met Debbie, his wife of 40 years, in Sunday School at Thrift Baptist Church in Paw Creek, just over the river in Mecklenburg County, where his family had a farm. They’ve been soulmates since.

“The people who did a lot of work were the ones like Debbie. When we had a ballplayer who needed a glove or needed shoes and couldn’t pay, or needed their hat or their socks, she would come up with the money to do that,” he says. “I don’t know how she did it, but she always came up with it. And one time, we were building the batting cage down at Mount Holly Middle School and we needed a tool, and she came up with the money for it. I couldn’t have done any of it without her.”

Goforth began coaching T-ball in 1990, then in the East Gaston Babe Ruth Association in 1991-92. He was the Gaston County Parks and Recreation volunteer of the year in 1993. “That was the year we went to all the fields in Gaston County and put roofs on all the dugouts. In the summertime, it was pretty hot on the kids, so we did that,” he says. “I saw things that needed doing, and wanted to help, so we did it.”

As a member of the Mount Holly Optimist Club, he took on several projects – raising money to build the gym at Tuckaseegee Park, put lights on Costner Field across from

Mount Holly Middle School, put in irrigation for sprinklers.

“My cousins all played football and baseball there in the 1950s and ‘60s, and the only lights they had on the field were where they had cords across the field with bulbs,” he says, “till a storm blew it down. So we decided it would be better to have lights on the field.”

Today, the Goforths can be found with folding chairs in their minivan, travelling to see their grandsons’ soccer games. You learn, from years of coaching and working on ballfields, how to be a fan, too. “It used to break my heart, when after practice there would be little kids waiting … practice would be over,

and it would get dark, and some parents who’d dropped their kids off, we’d wait an hour, hour and a half for them to show up,” he says. “Those were the kids who needed the discipline of sports.”

So, he and Debbie watch from the sidelines. And when the games are over, they go home.

Or to McDonald’s with the boys – because grandparents are like that, and the discipline of sports has its rewards. ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

• Coached youth sports for Mt. Holly Optimist Club several years

• Was an active East Gaston Booster Club member for several years

• Worked to improve facilities at Mt. Holly Middle School and East Gaston High School

• Served several NASCAR racing teams as a tire specialist

• Is a U S Army veteran

• Spent a long career as a mechanic for Duke Power

BArry Grice

Barry Grice was tennis before tennis was cool.

Decades before John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert thrilled television audiences, Grice was swatting forehands with a wooden Wilson Jack Kramer on the courts at Wingate School, 50 miles east of Mount Holly, when the university was still two-years.

Guy named Norman Chambers – who won the national junior college doubles title at Wingate and swept the Carolinas Conference singles and doubles titles three consecutive years at Appalachian State – got Grice hooked on the game, back in 1961-62.

Grice hadn’t played much prior to college because, well, there wasn’t any place to do it.

“He kinda helped me, starting out. He was looking for someone to chase balls, I guess,” Grice says, half-joking.

“Mount Holly didn’t have any tennis courts when I graduated high school in 1960. It wasn’t very big; nobody really played.”

So, Grice learned from Chambers, then enrolled in Charlotte College – now UNC-Charlotte – to quietly complete his degree in business administration.

Which would have gone smoothly, except for two unrelated life events.

He got married.

And, he got summoned to the Chancellor ’s office.

“I was in class one day, and this lady came and pulled me out of class and said Bonnie Cone wants to see you. And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’” he says.

Mrs. Cone, who died in 2003, was a leader and president of Charlotte College since its birth in 1949 and a popular, persuasive community advocate on numerous fronts. She was a teacher, had a Master’s in math from Duke University and had been a statistical analyst in Washington for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory.

“She’s going to kick me out of school,” Grice thought.

She didn’t. Instead, she let Grice in on her plans to move Charlotte College into the University of North Carolina system, but all the pieces weren’t in place.

“She said she wanted to start a tennis program, and she heard I played a little bit of tennis,” he says. “And next thing I knew, she gave me a list of teams we were going to play, and the times and where we were going to play. The only thing missing was a team.”

So, in 1964, Grice started the first team.

“We posted some bulletins on the board about setting up a team. And I guess we did OK. We would play at Freedom Park on the clay courts – practiced and played there – and we played Pembroke, St. Andrew’s, Belmont Abbey, Presbyterian, six or seven schools. I was the coach and the captain.”

Charlotte College became UNC-Charlotte in 1965.

Grice, who by then was combining married life with tennis tournaments, finished college in night school and got his degree in 1969.

He played in the Southern branch of the United States Tennis Association’s tournaments, and was ranked in the state and Southern region.

Mount Holly remained his home base. His wife, Gail, daughter of one of the Jones brothers who owned the supermarket that later became the City Café on Main Street in Mount Holly, taught home economics, and the Grices raised a

Career Highlights

son and a daughter.

So, it was only natural that he help with installation of the tennis complex at East Gaston High School. “They asked me what kind of courts, what kind of surface, the durability of the facility. I just guided with my experience,” he says. “They did a real good job on it, I’ll tell you that.

“They put in a special Har-Tru surface and a lighting system that’s really good, with a timer on it. Usually a team will play six singles and three doubles, but they put in eight courts.”

Grice, 74, doesn’t play much tennis anymore. Traded his racket for a golf club, after an injury to his back. He owns the course at Marlboro Country Club in Bennettsville, S.C., which he bought in 2006.

“I finally said, hey, I got to start doing something (after the injury), so I just started swinging a golf club and got into that. I like to play, but I love tennis. And Mount Holly and my family and friends.

“I was real excited about this Hall of Fame, but I felt there’s a lot more people who are more deserving.

“But I felt honored to be inducted.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

• Served as player/coach of first tennis team of Charlotte College – now UNCC – in 1964

• Attained a ranking of #3 in NC and #11 in the South in Class A Mens 35 Division in 70’s and 80’s

• Represented several cities and Southhampton Racquet Club in singles and doubles competition

• Won (41) and placed 2nd (16) in 57 tournaments between 1962 and 1987

• Won numerous awards in game hunting

• Retired as VP of Sales for A&E. He and Gail now own Marlboro Country Club in Bennettsville

Derek SpeArS

Long after the newspaper clippings disappeared, and statistics became faded markings in a scorebook, the concept Derek Spears remembers most about his sports career is camaraderie with the people who accompanied it. It was inevitable that he would play. His father, Joe, coached the Mount Holly High basketball team to its first-ever league regular season title in 1968 and guided the 1966-67 and 196768 girls teams to a combined 35-7 record. His little sister, Suzanne, went to college on a volleyball ride. Joe Spears is a 2010 inductee in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

Derek is 53 now, married with two kids and a job. His sports moments, the ones that were the most important thing in the whole wide world, are on a shelf, tucked aside.

“But my mom, she saved all kinds of things. We found them in boxes, stuff I’d forgotten about,” Derek Spears said. “She saved everything.”

Moms will do that.

When asked about his own Hall of Fame induction, Derek Spears didn’t boast about accomplishments in football or baseball or track. He mentioned his teammates, his coaches and his friends.

“James Ford, he was in track. He showed me a lot. He was a good track guy, and he was a good guy to help me,” says Spears, who ran the 4x100 relay and 100-yard and 200-yard dash, and might have won a state relay title in 10th grade if not for a fall in the rain on a slippery track.

“We had some of the best times in the state.”

His sophomore year in 1978, his first at East Gaston High School, Spears quarterbacked the Warriors to their first-ever Southwestern 3A Conference title and first post-season victory, but it isn’t the wins or applause that he recalls: It’s the welcoming committee.

“I knew I could play in 10th grade – it was just a matter of playing,” he says. “We were practicing in the gym before the season started, and I can remember running a play where the quarterback runs a fake-out, and I was running in the gym, and this guy was sitting there, Ricky or James McDowell, one of the brothers. And he had these little pads, like you have on defense, and when I was carrying the fake-out, he came out and just nailed me with those pads.

“It was, ‘Welcome to high school.’”

The following spring, Spears played second base on the Warriors team that was state Class 3A runners-up. “I love baseball. My favorite memories, team-wise, would be in junior high, and I have quite a few memories of American Legion teams,” he says. “There are a lot of good stories…”

He’d rather mention the good coaches than the good stories.

“We had coach (Wayne) Bolick, coach (Buddy) Green… Junior high, that’s the age when a kid starts believing what somebody’s telling them. You start believing,” Spears says. “They would talk about playing in the college ranks, or the pros. That’s when it really started hitting me, this could be fun. And a lot of people from my team, they did play college or pro baseball, and I think some ran track in college. I guess that’s the goal, what a lot

of us wanted to do.”

For Spears, in high school, recruiting letters arrived from across the South.

“The best part was going to the mailbox to see what you got. That was fun,” he says. “Some of the smaller schools, they wanted me to run track too, and play football. I decided real quick I didn’t want to do that.”

Mail came from Louisiana State University, North Carolina State, Winthrop, Coastal Carolina, South Carolina, Clemson …

He narrowed it to baseball, and Clemson, N.C. State and LSU.

Clemson won.

“I kinda liked Coach Bill Wilhelm. He was a legend down there,” Spears says. “And I can remember him coming to talk with my mom (Marie) and dad, and he was asking me, ‘You know, we have an all-conference second baseman coming back next year. You think you can beat him out?’

“I didn’t beat him out. He went on to play for the Mets for a long time…”

Spears played at Clemson as a utility infielder and outfielder as a freshman, then was red-shirted his sophomore year (“The all-conference guy was still there.”), then played some as a junior behind Bill Spiers, who went on to a career with the Houston Astros.

“So practically everyone I played with there, there were about seven major leaguers on those teams,” he says.

Spears went on to the business world. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Missy, and their sons Jake, 7, and Vance, 11. Vance plays tennis and squash. Jake favors baseball and basketball. Life is busy, the phone rings a lot, and Spears looks back at his baseball career and laughs and says it would be awful hard, now, to hit a good slider.

“I could run real fast and play defense, but I sometimes had a lack of ability to hit the ball…,” he says. “This Hall of Fame, I’m not sure I deserve it, but it’s a great honor. There’s a ton of people other than me who should be in there, but I appreciate it.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

• Quarterbacked EGHS Warriors to their first conference championship and first playoff victory as sophomore in 1978

• Played infield on the state championship runner-up Warriors team in 1979

• Played baseball for Clemson on back-to-back ACC Conference championship teams

• Derek and Missy own their own company

StephAnie frAzier

When the call came about Mount Holly’s Sports Hall of Fame, Stephanie Frazier, the businesswoman, was having lunch on Manhattan’s East Side en route to Las Vegas, because in adult life, as in sports, her days are non-stop with no time to lose.

Frazier, 46, is a client executive who provides the transmission path – the signal that connects two nodes of a network in data communication – for distribution of video

for television broadcasting to CNN, Turner Broadcasting, HBO and Warner Bros. She has a Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Tennessee.

In high school, and as a kid growing up in Mount Holly, Stephanie Frazier the athlete played year-round and excelled, because even as a child, she was non-stop competitive.

“There was no down time. It was fun,” she says. “That’s what happens when you don’t have the internet to be on all day.”

It began at age 6, when she joined the Mount Holly swim team, and she swam every summer until she was about 15. But accumulating laps in a pool wasn’t enough. “I started playing Saturday mornings in city leagues when I was about 10, and I did that all through high school. I did it all, basically,” she says.

“I did the Optimist League, when I was about 7 and 8 and 9, then in junior high I played softball and basketball and ran track.

“It was fun. I mean, honestly, it was fun! I was the classic little tomboy.”

A uniform for every season.

“I’m obviously hugely competitive. I enjoyed being part of a team. And it was a social activity as well,” she says.

By the time she enrolled in East Gaston High School, there weren’t too many sports she couldn’t play. So her senior year, she added another accomplishment: “I was senior class president. That was fun.”

She played volleyball in the fall, then basketball, then softball in the spring.

One thing after the next.

But one night, she made everything stop.

It was during a basketball game, at home versus West Charlotte her senior year. A 5-foot-9 shooting guard, it wasn’t uncommon for her to score 30 points a game.

On this night, she scored her 1,000th point.

“They stopped the game. Coach (Stan Napier) came out and gave me the game ball, and

everyone clapped. My parents came down. It was in the second quarter,” she says.

“Then I don’t think I hit another shot the whole game. It was all discombobulated.”

Frazier finished her high school career with between 1,300 and 1,400 points – she isn’t sure – and was recruited by the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, UNC-Asheville and the University of Central Florida. But her dream team – to play for Pat Summitt at Tennessee – remained that…. a dream. Frazier had visited the UT campus, for a softball game, and knew from that moment it was where she would go to school.

She thought about approaching Summitt.

“But I knew I wasn’t good enough to play for the Lady Vols, so I started not caring about my stats. I’d moved past it. I was ready to have fun and have a normal college life,” she says.

And it may have been normal, except for a close encounter at a football game – the moment that reigns as Frazier’s favorite sports memory.

“It was 1997, when Peyton Manning was the quarterback at Tennessee and we were in the Citrus Bowl and he had just thrown a touchdown pass. I had gone to get a Coke, and when I came back, he throws the touchdown and I stopped right where I was to celebrate. And I turned around, and Archie Manning and (Peyton’s) mother were right there, and we all high-fived and celebrated,” she says. “That was cool.”

So is being inducted into Mount Holly’s Hall of Fame.

“It’s certainly an honor,” says Frazier, who lives in Greensboro.

“I loved growing up in Mount Holly,” she says. “Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t trade it for anything.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

• Was a 3-sport star at EGHS, playing volleyball, basketball and softball

• Was MVP and leading scorer all three years in basketball at EGHS

• Was first 1,000-point-scorer for EGHS

• Was EGHS Female Athlete of the Year in 1988

• Graduated UT, and now is a client executive in television sports programming

Jerry BrookS

When Jerry Brooks was a kid, he was intrigued by wrestling. Watched it on television. Cheered for the stars of the WWE – Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair. So, when he heard his junior high had a wrestling team – what could be better than trying out for that?

“I learned very quickly it was nothing like what was on TV. It was a big shock there. And my friends were thinking the same as well,” he says. “We found out it was different. But we hung in there, and that’s what made it fun.”

Brooks, a 1991 East Gaston High School graduate, had enough fun to win two state championships, be recruited by several colleges and excel at the NCAA level. His success has landed him in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

Like the WWE stars, Brooks’ wrestling career had an entourage – not the boisterous, flamboyant kind, but a network of support in his family, friends and coaches that guided a child from Stanley along the path to where he is now – a successful business owner in metro Raleigh, with a wife and two children.

“Coach (Doug) Smith (at East Gaston) was the one who always kept his finger on me, when I was going to school, who asked who I hung out with, made sure I kept my head on straight and made sure I didn’t mess up the opportunity I had in front of me,” Brooks says. “He stayed focused on me. In that day and age, where there weren’t too many guys getting scholarships for wrestling, he made sure I had the opportunity. He would tell me, ‘Be careful these next four or five years, because what you do now is going to determine the type of lifestyle you’re going to live.’”

Brooks grew up watching his father and uncles play sports, and he took to football and baseball, along with wrestling. At Stanley Middle School, then at East Gaston, it meant yearround competition – one season following another, year after year. He started on the wrestling team in eighth grade, tipping in at 121 pounds, and remembers receiving a Most Valuable Player award. “I won whatever matches I got to wrestle,” he says.

By ninth grade, he was 145 pounds and learning that success is a group effort.

The 1991 team won the state 4A title with a 40-15 victory over Cary and went 20-0 in dual meets. “First of all, one thing about that season, I’ll be honest with you, is that I was very fortunate to have some great coaches and we had real good chemistry on that team,” Brooks says. “We had a strong team up and down the line-up, and there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ It’s an individual sport, but it’s a team sport, and we cheered each other on and moved some guys up and down the line-up to give us the way to win the match.

“There was no bickering, no fighting. We practiced every day after school, in the cafeteria. We’d move the chairs and unroll the mats and move in there and start wrestling. We didn’t have a wrestling room at East Gaston; we’d move the chairs, then move them back.”

He won two state championships as an individual, but credits the team. “We were all inseparable. We worked hard, because we knew we were being hunted – everyone was out to get us. And that’s what motivated us. We didn’t take any shortcuts. Every time we went somewhere, we were humble,” he says. “We let our work show on the mats.”

Favorite memory? “Seeing my cousin, Mario McCorkle, win a state championship,” he says. “My junior season in high school, going through there and winning the team state championship, and seeing my cousin do good in the tournament. And winning state championships as a team. Those were the most memorable times of my career.”

A few small colleges took notice of Brooks for football, but mostly it was wrestling. Schools from Vermont to Pembroke

had him on their wish lists. “But the one that stood out the most, that was Division I and had the academics, was Campbell. I got a partial scholarship, the most that was ever offered a freshman, then after my first year, it became full,” he says.

Career Highlights

He sat out his freshman year to concentrate on academics, then competed the following seasons.

He holds the Campbell school record for most pins in a season, with 17 in 1994-95, and is second all-time in wins for a season, with 39, also in 1994-95. He is 14th in school history in career wins, with 64, from 1993 to 1996.

He graduated from the Research Triangle area university with a degree in Business Administration and Education.

He met his wife, Theresa, in 1993 at Campbell, and they married in 2000. The family lives near Raleigh, and Theresa, who also has a master’s in special education from Belmont Abbey, is a teacher with Wake County Public Schools. Their son Jalen, 15, wrestles – he was fourth his state meet, in the private school sector as a 9th grader. Their daughter, Jada, turned 12 in July. Jerry Brooks owns five franchises of Dickey’s Barbecue Pit. He’s been in the restaurant business since 2011.

Brooks credits the support of his late father, Jerry “Pete” Brooks, and his mother, Mary Ann Arnold, as well as his coaches, with giving him the foundation to create the life he leads. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the coaches and my teammates, throughout my athletic career,” he says, of the Hall of Fame induction. “Being from around Mount Holly and going to East Gaston, that small-town community, it’s something I wish I had for my children. But it got me to where I am today. It’s precious to me. Home is home. I like it.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

• Was a 2-time individual state champion wrestler

• Was a key member of 1991 State 4A champion Warriors wrestling team

• As a 3-sport star, he also played football and baseball in addition to wrestling

• Holds Campbell University record for pins in a season (17)

• Won the NCAA Eastern Regional in 1995 and had a season record of 40-7 that year

• Jerry and wife Theresa own 5 Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchises in the Raleigh area

1991 eASt GASton WreStlinG

They were a bond of brothers, Velcro’d together by the coached belief that they could whup anyone. They were right.

The 1990-91 East Gaston High School wrestling team was 20-0 and state champs, an outcome they knew was inevitable from day one.

“Coach (Doug) Smith and Kirk Wells, his assistant, they instilled an attitude in us that we just couldn’t be beat. And we bought into it,” says Paul Combs, a senior that year who wrestled at 125 pounds. “And it just progressed. These were a bunch of young, teachable boys that had great coaches, and every day at practice they didn’t just drill moves and technique, they would drill an attitude of success into our heads. Every day.

“We were as mentally tough as we were physical.”

The Warriors won the North Carolina State 4A Individual Tournament, the Western 4A Regional, the Tri-County 4-A Conference, the Gaston County Tournament and everything during the regular season. As a team, they remain united in the

Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“One of the pleasures of my life was walking into a gym behind these guys and watching everyone’s heads turn and look at them,” says Smith, who coach East Gaston from 1978 to 1992. “It was like, ‘Uh-oh, there they are.’ It was the culture, the winning culture we developed in the 1980s about how to win, and in the ‘90s, they just assumed we would do it again.”

The points margin from those 20 victories was 1,136-203. Everyone helped everyone, to put the best combination on the mat.

“We see so many things in today’s world, political stuff, that tries to divide us among racial lines, ethnic lines, socioeconomic lines, and you look at that ’91 team and we had kids of all races, all backgrounds, and we didn’t care about black, we didn’t care about white,” says Cain Beard, who was a 103-pound sophomore. “The only color we cared about was gold. It’s a standard you set.”

Jerry Brooks, a senior who went on to compete for Campbell University, was state champion that year, at 189 pounds.

“Coach Smith is a real good guy, a real good coach,” he says.

Career Highlights

• Head coach: Doug Smith (NC 4A Coach of the Year)

• Team record: 20-0

• State tournament qualifiers: 9 (Billy Rick, 112; Shad Ellis, 119; Paul Combs, 125; Mario McCorkle, 130; Brian Stewart, 140; Todd Flowers, 145; Justin Broome, 160; Julius Lynch, 171; Jerry Brooks, 189)

• State champion: 1 (Jerry Brooks)

• State runners-up: 3 (Shad Ellis, Paul Combs, Marrio McCorkle)

• Tournaments won: NC State Dual Team; NC State 4A Individual Tournament (thenrecord 85.5 points); NC Western 4A Regional; Tri-County 4A Conference; Gaston County Tournament; North Surry Duals; WRAL Invitational; East Gaston Invitational

• Team members who would win an individual state title during their career: 3

• Team members who would be state placers during their career: 11

• Team members who would be state qualifiers during their career: 20 Who the Warriors beat/ match scores

• North Gaston 53-14; Myers Park 57-8; South Mecklenburg 58-9; Ashbrook 65-5; Kings Mountain 46-14; McMichael 66-6; Forbush 65-2; North Surry 55-9; Northwest Guilford 61-12; Olympic 69-0; West Mecklenburg 40-26; North Mecklenburg 62-6; West Charlotte 70-3; Crest 61-3; Harding 78-0; Winston-Salem Glenn 50-16; Hickory 64-12; Davie County 33-20; West Mecklenburg 43-23; Cary 40-15

• Total score vs. all opponents: 1,136-203

1991 East Gaston WrEstlinG story From paGE 17

“All the coaches I was able to play sports under, I was very fortunate.”

The team graduated eight starters from the previous year. “We had to fill eight weight classes out of 13, so we weren’t really on some people’s radar,” Smith says, “But this team really came together. We wore out pretty much everybody. It was incredible.”

The Warriors beat Olympic High School 69-0 and Harding High School 78-0. For Combs, the WRAL tournament in Raleigh was the highlight. “It was the biggest tournament of the year. There were probably 40 teams there,” he says. “Rock Hill had won the state eight times in 10 years and they were nationally ranked, and we beat them that year. By a point and a half. I pinned a kid, and Coach Smith looked at me and said, ‘You just won the tournament for us right there. Your points just won the tournament.’”

Today, Smith owns a trophy and awards business, Awards Express, in Charlotte.

It’s been 25 years since that ’91 season.

Combs went from high school to the military and works for Old Dominion Freight Lines.

Brooks lives near Raleigh and owns five franchises of Dickey’s Barbecue Pit.

Beard lives in Stanley and commutes to Rock Hill, S.C. He’s been the wrestling coach at Rock Hill High School for nine years, and his team has won three state championships and been runners-up three times. He was selected to coach in the 2016 SCWCA Best Western North South All-Star Classic last March in North Myrtle Beach.

“That culture that was there in ’91, the winning and doing things the right way, we just all knew everybody was on the same page – everybody knew what our goals were from the get-go,” Beard says. “What I probably hold most dear is that everybody on that team, from the littlest guy to the biggest guy, we held each other to a standard that we were going to go out and perform to the best of our ability, and we knew that the end goal was a state championship.

“Coach Smith always said, take care of our team goals first and anything after that is icing on the cake. And that’s been my coaching philosophy as well, and it’s paid off. We spent so much time together over that four-month period in ’91, that we developed a bond like family. To this day, those guys are my brothers. No matter where we go in life, we have that bond that will never go away.”

— By Kathy Blake

www.gastonymca.org

The Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame is a 501(c)3 organization that celebrates Mount Holly’s rich sports history and supports future athletes through its work with local organizations. Classiﬁed as a public charity, we welcome your tax deductible gifts. In addition to our practice of supporting local charities, we are now funding college scholarships for deserving local students.

The mailing address for your gift is, 212 Dogwood Dr., Mount Holly, NC 28120.

Mount Holly SportS

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Thank you for all your years of service and support of Mt. Holly Sports Teams.

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Your families and friends congratulate you on induction to the MHSHOF

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The Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame

Would Like To Thank

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For its continued support.

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In 2016

The Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame Supports these non-proﬁts.

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Mission Statement of the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame:

e Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame was established to honor our community’s rich sports history and to recognize the outstanding individuals and teams who have excelled over the last century on behalf of our city.

Our ultimate goal is to educate the community about the outstanding accomplishments of these individuals and teams, instill civic pride in our citizens and promote Mount Holly. Our emphasis on education has lead us to develop a scholarship program through our local high schools.

In addition to education, the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame supports charitable contributions for youth groups and local civic organizations by committing to pay out 10% of its year end balance of funds to non-pro ts. Its plans include working forward to the establishment of a permanent display of inductee sports memorabilia.