Mount Holly HOF 2021_Final by SouthlakeChristianAcademy

Event Program

Opening Remarks ........................................ Scott Pope

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

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

Singing of our National Anthem ................ Ashley Flowers

Invocation

Dinner

Welcome .....................................................

Mayor Bryan Hough

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

Past Inductees

Corporate Sponsors

City and County Officials

Committee Members

Special Thanks

2019 Scholarships & AOY

Presentation by.............................................Eddie Wilson

Induction Ceremony

Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame Community Spirit Award

Sponsored by American & Efird ..................... Eddie Wilson

Presented to Eddie Womack

Reggie Ballard .............................................. Gary Neely

Don Fortner ................................................. Richard Browne

Mike Featherstone ...................................... Scott Pope

Brooke Wilkinson ....................................... Tyler Berg

Scottie Holden ............................................ Doug Smith

1992 EGHS Wrestling ................................. Doug Smith

Closing Remarks ......................................... Scott Pope

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

EGHS Song ................................................. Ashley Flowers

Hall of Fame Committee

President - Scott Pope

Vice President - Richard Browne

Treasurer - Doug Smith

Secretary - Eddie Wilson

Committee Members - James Ford, Gary Neely and Tyler Berg

Hall of Fame Committee

Committee Members

— Photograph by John Robinson

2021 MHSHOF Scholarships

2021 MHSHOF Scholarship

Winners & Sponsors

Layton Miller, UNC Charlotte

Bob & Marguerite Randall Scholarship

2021 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

2016

Barry Grice

Derek Spears

Stephanie Frazier

Jerry Brooks

1991 East Gaston Wrestling

Community Spirit Award Winner

Aaron Goforth

2017

Eddie Wyatt, Jr.

Grant Hoffman Jr.

Carmen Baker

James Ford East Gaston’s 1977 Golf Team

Community Spirit Award Winner

Carl Baber

2018

Tony Leroy McConnell

William Phillip White

Sue Carlton Whitley

John Logan

Jeff Lee

Hawks Baseball 1964-1967

Community Spirit Award Winner

Henry Massey

2019

1941 Hawks

Howard Horton

Sam Brown

April Harte

Tyler Berg

1978 East Gaston Football Team

Community Spirit Award Winner

Scott Pope

2020

No Inductees due to COVID-19

School Songs

2021 Community Spirit Award

EddiE Womack

The gift, the giver, and boys who play ball

Some youth ballplayers didn’t have a ride to the field. So coaches would pick them up for practice and drive them home, only to find both cars in the driveway. “Some of them didn’t have the best family life, and we tried to give them through ball what they weren’t getting from home,” says Donna Womack, whose husband Eddie coached. “They were good athletes. You just take them under your wing.”

Years later, a man approached the Womacks at a restaurant. He had a son with him, about 8 years old. The man told his son, “This was my coach in Optimist Ball, and he taught me more about life and baseball than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Not all sports accomplishments are validated by statistics. Interpersonal skills, effort and determination can’t be numerically recorded in a coaching notebook. Neither can basic concern for a person’s well-being.

Eddie Womack coached people, not just athletes. For 35 years in Mount Holly schools, Little Leagues, Dixie Youth League baseball, Babe Ruth, fall ball. He also played football and baseball for Mount Holly High School and played both sports at Lenoir-Rhyne.

Around Mount Holly, he’s known as the man who has coached so many kids – and cared about so many kids.

But there is one statistic Womack knows: According to the NCAA, only about 2 percent of high school athletes receive a college scholarship. And, fewer than 2 percent of college athletes have the chance to turn pro.

Youth ball, or maybe high school ball, is all they get.

“That’s when you need these special coaches. It’s a gift. Coaching is a gift,” Donna says. “You have to have a passion for it.”

Eddie Womack first put on a players’ uniform in 1962, for pee-wee football. He played fullback and tailback for Mount Holly High from 1965 through 1967 and played baseball 1965 through 1968. He went to Lenoir-Ryne in 1968 and started coaching locally in 1971, when he assisted Coach Delmer Wiles with baseball and football at Mount Holly High. The next 30-plus years were a tour of youth leagues, one after the other, season after season.

This year, for his efforts, he’s inducted in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame with the Community Service Award.

“I’m just a representative of people that have helped coach with me. You can’t do it by yourself,” he says. “It’s just in my blood. I just want to coach. Some people tell me I’m crazy and ask how I put up with the parents. I tell them, the parents don’t mess with me. I’m here to teach the kids to play ball.”

But family influences happen.

“I had a kid at East Gaston, and he was tall, and he said all he could do was pitch. His older brother played college ball, and I had a talk with him privately,” Womack says, “and I said, ‘Let me be honest with you. You don’t want to play baseball.’ I just had that feeling, and one day his brother came to watch him play. And I told him, ‘You’re not your brother. I have two sons. They’re not the same.’ Parents sometimes want kids to be something they’re not. It’s a crying shame.”

The Womacks’ sons are Kelly, who will be 43 in November, and Kent, who will turn 40 in January. Eddie Womack is 70. He and Donna have been married 45 years. “Ever since I’ve known him, he’s loved sports,” she says. “When we got married, he played softball and on the traveling league team and the wives would go. So we’ve always been in it, and around it, and he umpires, and he’s always been on a ballfield. He just loves the kids and what he does.

“It’s funny, because sometimes these big, tall guys will come up to him and say, ‘Hi, Coach,’ and they were like 8 or 9 when he coached them. It makes him feel good. The boys, they don’t forget what you taught them. He says he tries to teach them ball

and the values of life. You can carry the values on through long after the games.”

So many stories:

“I had one kid, he was 13 or 14 and his parents separated right before ball started and he had a big chip on his shoulder because he thought everyone was looking at him,” Womack says, “because at that time, not a lot of people separated or got divorced. We were at a ballgame and I brought him in from the outfield to pitch, and me and another coach were walking back to the sideline laughing and he thought we were laughing at him and he hollered at us. And he’s about 6-foot and I’m about 5-foot-7 if you stretch me, and I said, ‘Don’t you ever holler at a coach again. All I want you to do is pitch.’ After he finished that inning he said, ‘I’m sorry, coach.’ And I said, ‘I love you buddy.’ He made All-Stars. I wanted him to enjoy the game of baseball.”

“I had one team a few years ago, a guy called me up late on a Thursday night and says, ‘I got 14 boys who want to play ball this fall, and we’ll put them in a league.’ I said, first question, do they want to play ball? He said, ‘Yes. They didn’t make the travel team.’ I said, if they want to play, I’ll coach ‘em. So we played the fall league and went 7-2-1. One guy says, ‘How’d you get these boys to win? We couldn’t get them to win in rec ball. And I said, I’m not their daddy. Sometimes you need a change.”

Womack was in an accident in 2015. He drives a truck now,

for Lanier Material Sales. Doctors want to put a metal plate in his back. Some days, he has trouble walking. But he wants to coach again. He lost his best friend at age 17, and his last words to him, before doctors operated on the friend’s brain, were, “We’ll throw the ball when you get out of the hospital.” He doesn’t question the Lord’s work, he says. “I know I’ll see him again.”

Meanwhile, he watches the kids play ball, tries to give them part of his gift before they’re grown.

He quotes a song by Trace Adkins:

“You’re gonna miss this/ You’re gonna want this back/ You’re gonna wish these days hadn’t gone by so fast/ These are some good times/ So take a good look around/ You may not know it now/ But you’re gonna miss this.”

One day, Donna says, Eddie left her a note.

It said, “Donna, thank you for always letting me do what I love to do.”

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

As a player:

• Pee-Wee Football, 1962; Midget Football, 1963; Pop-Warner All-American

• Mount Holly High School: Football 1965-67 (fullback, tailback). Won Western 2A State in 1967

• Mount Holly High School: Baseball 1965-68 (pitcher) Conference champions 1964, ’65, ’66, ’67

• Lenoire-Ryne College: Baseball, football

As a coach:

• Mount Holly High School: Assistant for baseball, football 1971-1972

• Coached Mount Holly Recreation Department and Little League teams: 1970s

• Dixie Youth baseball: 1990-2000

• Babe Ruth: 1980s

• East Gaston assistant coach, fall ball: 1993-2005

• Umpire: Babe Ruth and Dixie League games

REggiE BallaRd

Reggie Ballard: Owner of the End Zone

Reggie Ballard has the newspaper clippings, highlighted in yellow, describing his success at Mount Holly High in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“Reggie Ballard scored three of the Hawk tallies,” one says, about a 40-0 win over Cramerton.

Then, in a 27-13 win over the “invading” Mount Pleasant Tigers: “Friday night, Reggie Ballard scored two touchdowns to make a shamble of the area scoring race.” And, “He intercepted a Tiger pass and scampered to pay dirt.”

Ballard, who is being inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame, had 91 points before his last high school game, when the papers let fans know he would be “aiming at the century mark.” He finished with 104 points scored his senior year, including extra points.

“I’m not intentionally trying to toot my own horn,” Ballard says, “but I scored maybe 10 touchdowns my junior year and 17 my senior year and was third in the state in scoring, and nobody at Mount Holly High School has ever done that, far as I can find out. And that was on a nine-game schedule.”

Ballard never missed a football game in high school.

At 6-foot-2, he also played center for the basketball team.

Ballard began competitive football in seventh grade, when his friend Jimmy talked him into trying out. At Mount Holly, Ballard started all four years – at center his freshman season, then a “lonesome end” as a sophomore and in the backfield his last two years.

He got a full ride to UNC-Chapel Hill and offers from a few other colleges before attending Castle Heights Military Academy in Tennessee, serving in the military stationed in Germany and finishing his football career at Western Carolina.

“And I’ve got an elephant memory,” he says. “I remember all of it, my childhood and all.”

Ballard was born in Mount Holly, at home, in March 1944. His twin sister, Rheba, grew up to marry a preacher and move to Macon, Ga., where the couple started a church. He lives in Forest, Virginia, now, a small town just southwest of Lynchburg.

“I remember we did very well in the conference championships my junior and senior years,” he says, “but we got a bad rap. We went on to the 3A playoffs, and we got killed in the state playoffs by Winston-Salem [James A.] Gray 68-0. The next year, Winston-Salem moved to 4A and we were 2A. After that, we got to play some of the smaller teams.”

He remembers the team being invited to play up toward Brevard in a 3A game, “And I was opposed to going and getting killed again. So I voted against it. The other co-captain did, too. That was [2007 MHSHOF inductee] Delmer Wiles,” he says. “So we didn’t go.”

Ballard never missed a football game in high school. At 6-foot-2, he also played center for the basketball team. “And even though I can’t prove it, and it’s probably irrelevant, I probably grabbed the most rebounds in school history,” he says. “I could stick my hand 6 or 8 inches down inside the

basket. I could stuff the ball. Back then, we could only do that in practice, though. We couldn’t do it in games; it was against the rules.”

In addition to UNC, the University of Tennessee and University of Virginia recruited him, and he had a connection through Wiles that could have put him at Indiana, he says.

“I should have gone to Tennessee,” he says. “They played the single wing at the time. I didn’t have perfect enough grades to get into Chapel Hill.”

He chose, instead, to play for Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame member Stroud Gwynn at Castle Heights. “He was a legend,” Ballard says. “Knoxville flew a plane to the last [high school] game I played, and they wanted me to fly to the campus and visit, and they’d fly me back home. But I wanted to go to Chapel Hill and play for Jim Hickey [who coached from 1959 to 1966]. But my dad had just died, and I made a few mistakes, and I went to Castle Heights, then back home to go to work, over in Gastonia. I knew I was going to get drafted, so I joined the Army.”

Ballard was in Germany from September 1964 to December 1966. The post had a pee-wee football team, and Ballard was

asked to coach it. “We had no offense the first four games. I wrote home and asked Coach Wiles to send me some plays,” he says. “I’ve never seen little kids take to the single wing like those kids did. We won six in a row and finished 7-4, lost the last game in a snow storm. I mean a snow storm.”

About 13 years ago, Ballard got the idea to contact one of his players, who was living in Tampa. They reminisced a bit, then the player asked Ballard if he remembered a certain kid from that overseas team…and asked if he ever watched Star Trek. That kid, his player said, played Geordi La Forge – guy named LaVar Burton.

“And that’s ‘the rest of the story,’” Ballard says.

After returning to the states, Ballard attended Western Carolina but an injury forced him to leave football behind. He came home to Mount Holly, married, and worked for Duke Energy for 30 years, leaving the company in 1997. He has two daughters and a son.

He’s divorced, but has rekindled a relationship with a woman he knew in high school, who lives in Virginia, also. To make the trip back for the Hall of Fame, he says, “is an honor.”

These days, Ballard can be found flying his 1953 Piper Tri-Pacer, a four-seater short-wing plane that, he says, “is a lot of fun.” He doesn’t mention if he’ll drive or fly to return to Mount Holly for the ceremony, but he does mention the name of the airplane organization he’s joined. It’s called Sentimental Journey. ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

• Mount Holly High School football: 19591962

• Top scorer in county, senior year: 104 points

• Recruited by UNC-Chapel Hill, Tennessee and Virginia

• Standout at Castle Heights Military Academy

• Finished playing career at Western Carolina

donald FoRtnER

Dancing with Gloves On

As far back as Donald Fortner’s daughter Elizabeth can remember, music floated through the house. Jazz music … Dixieland Jazz.

And her father danced.

He was the youngest of 12 children, all of them blessed with moves to accompany a trumpet melody and cornettrombone improve.

“Oh, they were all good dancers, some more than others, but they all loved dancing to the music,” Elizabeth Hall says. “If you had any kind of get-together, there was always dancing. They’re all gone, now, all the brothers and sisters.”

The last, Aunt Mary, was 95 when she went to be with Lord in July of 2019.

Don Fortner ’s story, which started in Mount Holly in January of 1931 and had segments in South Carolina and Texas, isn’t solely about jazz tunes, which filled the CDs scattered about his home and car. He was, Hall says, “multi-faceted.” A college graduate, war veteran, car salesman, Christian.

He also was a champion boxer – “not a fighter, a boxer,” Hall says. A successful one, which has earned him a spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I wish my father were alive to be able to receive this

award,” she says, “but I know he’s looking down, and he’s so proud that he’s a son of Mount Holly.”

The music is a glimpse into who Donald Fortner was, when he wasn’t a student-athlete, or working man.

“He was a Renaissance Man. He taught at Arthur Murray to make money during college,” says Hall, who lives in Delaware now. “He was not your typical handyman. You weren’t going to ask him to rebuild an engine or build a playset, but he could show you how to do the foxtrot, or waltz or the tango, which was a lot more interesting. He taught us in the living room. As a young child, you’re not always that interested, but it was there if we wanted. And he would always go to the Chattanooga Jazz Festival with a cousin. That was something he looked forward to.”

It was the boxing that fascinated Fortner while at Mount Holly High School. He boxed for the school team and won the 1948 Mount Holly Golden Gloves title as a middleweight. There was a two-story building on Main Street, with a drug store downstairs and room upstairs, where the boxing club met to train. He won the 1949 Charlotte Golden Gloves title, the ’49 Concord Golden Gloves and 1950 Golden Gloves in Mooresville and Silver Gloves in Gastonia.

His name made the papers a lot, and though there’s a difference between a fighter and a boxer, sportswriters’ Webster’s are known to fluctuate, slightly.

From the Mount Holly News, of Friday, January 6, 1950:

“Two Mount Holly pugilists were slated to fight in the semifinals of Gastonia’s 10th annual Silver Gloves at the Gastonia Armory last night. The two boys on the evening card were Don Fortner, popular local fighter and loser in a raw decision at the Gloves last year, and Jack Carpenter, representing the Cramerton team in the ring. Don is one of the best boxers to come out of Mount Holly in many moons and his loss in the Silver Gloves last year was the subject of much debate since most fans agreed that Don had easily beaten his opponent.

Fortner was slated to mix with Lee Godfrey last night in an open division welterweight battle royal. Results were not available as The News went to press. Fortner was fighting unattached .”

His talent got him a ride to Belmont Abbey, where he earned an associate’s degree in general studies before getting a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, where he was a welterweight champion in 1950, ’51 and ’52.

The Korean War came, and Fortner was stationed in Tokyo. His South Carolina diploma says B.A. in Education, January 1953.

Fortner had a buddy, a fellow boxer, named Jim McManus. They met in sixth grade and were friends forever, until Fortner died in April of 2013. McManus is 90 and lives in Myrtle Beach. He still talks of his friend in present tense.

He called Fortner “Fuzz” because of the way his haircut stood up straight.

One day in eighth grade, McManus signed a school paper with his initials – J.A.S. Fortner saw it and, perhaps with a fivepiece band bebop’n in his head, said “Jazz.”

“And now,” McManus says, “everyone knows me as Jazz. I have friends who still call me Jazz.”

The two boxed together in high school, under Coach Dick Thompson who did boxing and football, and McManus said he’d have gone to South Carolina and been a Fightin’ Gamecock, too, if the place hadn’t been so big. “It was so huge, I had nightmares. I backed out and went to Western Carolina and got my degree,” he says.

He has stories, lots of them, about him and Fortner’s adventures. Like the one about the mansion.

“We were living in the same village in Mount Holly, and we were just walking along the road one day and there was a big home, we called it the mansion, and they had what you call a servant’s house, and we looked and there was smoke coming out of it,” he says, “and the two of us rushed into that house, and there was one lady. And we carried her out, and the flames took over and my gosh, we went and got the furniture out, and Boom! It was gone.”

They worked out at the boxing club on Main Street, across the street from Charlie’s Drugs, “then moved on up the Stanley road, to that community building.”

After college, the two men went separate directions. But they never lost touch. Fortner had car dealerships in Texas. “But before that, he was selling these high-priced cars at a

dealership in Charlotte,” McManus says, “and I’d call the dealership and say, ‘I want to speak to Fuzz.’ And they’d give him the phone. He was quite a fellow, and quite a blessing.”

McManus went into the television broadcasting business and got stations on the air in Ohio and Greenville, S.C., where he was president of the Greenville Broadcasting Corporation. When he moved to Myrtle Beach, he started the city’s FOX affiliate.

There’s another part to the bond between the men. McManus pastors The Lord’s Chapel in Myrtle, an interdenominational church. He’s been doing mission work for 38 years, he says.

He calls Fortner “an athlete for Christ.”

“I was blessed to serve as a Christian minister to Don for a number of years,” he says.

“I think it’s remarkable, the friendship they had,” Hall says. “There aren’t too many people who can say they had that long of a friendship, with someone they’ve known since childhood. They came together over a sport, growing up in the same town, and went so many different directions and are still close. It’s a remarkable bond.”

Hall says that, among her father’s many trophies, were some that showed his character, too. Most Popular Boxer showed up a lot, on the name plate.

“He never met a stranger,” she says. “He was very talkative, very likable. And very, very friendly. Like a Teddy bear.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

Tournaments won:

• 1948 Mount Holly Golden Gloves (middleweight)

• 1949 Charlotte Golden Gloves

• 1949 Concord Golden Gloves, by knockout

• 1949 Charlotte Golden Gloves

• 1950 Mooresville Golden Gloves

• 1950 Gastonia Silver Gloves

College:

• Boxing scholarship to Belmont Abbey

• Boxing scholarship to University of South Carolina

• Univ. of S.C. welterweight champion, 1950, ’51, ‘52

mikE FEathERstonE

Turning rocks into diamonds

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

Before he ever saw the inside of a dugout, Mike Featherstone saw his future. He felt the ball roll in his left hand, got the grip just right, and hurled a good cutter 90 miles an hour, straight to the mitt. Little kids dream like that, sometimes.

What Featherstone actually held was a hand full of rocks, in a back yard, with a fan club of two.

“I guess my parents noticed, because I liked to throw rocks as a little kid, and they got me into the Mount Holly Optimist League, made up of the local churches,” he says. “I started playing Little League and played for the Castena Presbyterian Church on Highway 16 up near Mountain Island.”

Being a lefty, he says, made it a natural fit to be a pitcher.

He pitched in middle school, in high school, in front of scouts who promised summers in Arizona, and for a team whose antics

rivaled the Bad News Bears. He pitched in college, and had his pick-off moved filmed as a training video. He pitched for a summer league team that somehow made it to Kansas in a bus – engine probably held together by Scotch tape and prayer – that didn’t make it back home no matter how many times they clicked their heels.

He pitched in a Cape Cod League and in the pros, in the Braves organization, and found that, in baseball, always knowing where you’re going leads to cherished memories of where you’ve been.

Featherstone, 56, of Lincolnton, ends his baseball ride in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“It’s an honor. The first thing I thought about when they told me was that if my dad were still here, he could participate,” he says. “I’m just honored. I appreciate the acknowledgment.”

It was Earnest Featherstone who taught his son about aiming high, but taking the right road to get there.

“My dad was my mentor, and I looked up to him and respected him,” Featherstone says. “He made good decisions.”

A year before Featherstone graduated from East Gaston High School in 1982, Major League scouts were regulars at games. Particularly Vern Benson, then with the St. Louis organization. Featherstone was All-Southwest Conference as a junior and senior, conference co-Player of the Year in 1981 and pitched four onehitters. Benson called to say the Cardinals planned to take him in the sixth round and plant him in Arizona. Earnest Featherstone said no.

“I wanted to go play ball. That’s really kind of a low point between me and my father. I didn’t talk to him for six months,” Featherstone says. “I would have gone to (Class) A ball or rookie ball, but he was all about education. It was absolutely the right move. Fathers know best. I was only 17. But we mended fences, and I got my degree from Wake Forest.”

Featherstone was the winning pitcher against Shelby in the playoffs his senior year at East Gaston, the year Wake was in the market for a left-handed pitcher. Wake coach Marvin Crater, the ACC Coach of the Year in 1982 – who played in the Yankees farm system and was roommates with Yogi Berra – was in the stands. “He offered me a full ride,” Featherstone says. “He had the paperwork with him.”

But before college, there was that certain summer league.

The 1983 semi-pro Winston-Salem Indians placed sixth in the National Invitation Tournament in Wichita. “It was a talented team; the guys, the starting line-up had played some level of minor league professional baseball. They were in their late 20s, early 30s, kind of a rag-tag Bad News Bears,” he says. “The owner was an interior decorator. We had a shortstop named Ron Fowler, and during the game he would be smoking a cigarette and he would never drop an ash when the ball was hit to him. He could turn a double play smooth as silk.

“They had a cooler in the dugout and they loved Bud Lite.

And the more beer they’d drink, the better they’d hit. There’s a lot that goes on that the fans don’t have a clue.”

Like, when the umpire is a little tight on the strike zone, and the catcher has to have a talk, send a message. “So, you get a runner on first and we’d have a pitchout, where we’re going to pick the runner of first. And sometimes, you get the signals crossed and I throw it right over the plate, and sometimes you hit the ump in the shin guards,” he says. “One time, I kind of hit him in the midsection and he kind of went down, and the catcher told him, ‘You need to loosen up the strike zone, or we’ll do this all night long.’”

But back to the W-S Indians…

“We ended up going to the national semi-pro tournament in Wichita, Kansas, and ended up finishing sixth. We were playing in the Triple-A ballpark, and the crowd was chanting for us. Ron never dropped an ash the whole tournament. We rented a Greyhound bus, and it smoked like a freight train, so when we left Winston-Salem, instead of going on I-40 through Knoxville and a straight shot to Kansas, we had to go through Atlanta because that thing would not make it through the mountains. I called my dad and said it wouldn’t make it back to North Carolina. Could he get me a plane ticket? Four other guys did the same thing.”

Next summer; different team.

“My sophomore year, I got a chance to go to the Cape Cod League, and that was a great experience,” he says. “It’s a summer league put together by college coaches, to invite the upper tier of talent to play together. I played with the Falmouth Commodores. It was loaded with scouts at every game.”

Featherstone played 52 games in four years at Wake Forest and in 1986 had the second-most strikeouts in the ACC. He pitched 73 innings in 16 games his senior year, with 54 strike-outs.

He was drafted by Atlanta and played for the Pulaski (Virginia) Braves in the Appalachian League, and won the Rookie League Championship.

“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.” – Yogi Berra Featherstone’s last game was in 1987. He tore the rotator cuff on his pitching arm and had surgery in the winter. By spring training in Bradenton, Florida, the arm didn’t cooperate. “There wasn’t enough time to rehab, so I got released. My wife and I, we never looked back.”

He and Lisa were married in July 1987. They have three daughters – Brittany, Mackenzie and Kassidy. Today, Featherstone works for Duke Energy, as manager of the IT enterprise help desk. He has about 60 employees.

“Sometimes, I remember the camaraderie with the guys, and playing the game and the love of the game,” he says. “And those minor league road trips, travelling on the busses…good times. Those are some good memories.” ■

—

By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

East Gaston High School (1980-1982):

• Sophomore – 22 1/3 innings, 28 strikeouts, 0.94 ERA. Junior – 63 2/3 innings, 97 strikeouts, 7-3 record with 3 saves. Senior – 71 innings pitched, 97 strikeouts, 8-2 record with 2 saves.

• All-Conference, 1981 and 1982. 1981 Southwest Conference co-Player of the Year. Intended 6thround pick of the St. Louis Cardinals. Signed NLI with Wake Forest.

Wake Forest University (1983-1986):

• 1983 – Sixth place, National Invitation Tournament, Wichita, Kansas with the summer league state champions Winston-Salem Indians semi-pro team. 1984 – Cape Cod summer league, Falmouth Commodores. 1985 – Pitched a one-hitter in win over Georgia Tech. 1986 – Team co-captain. Led Atlantic Coast Conference with most first-base pickoffs. Drafted by Atlanta Braves.

Professional:

• Played for the Pulaski (Va.) Braves of the Appalachian League. Won Rookie League championship.

BRookE Wilkinson

BBasketball is Life. The rest is merely paperwork

She grew up in a small town, where boys didn’t notice, or care, that their teammate was a girl. She was as good as them, or better, and her two brothers – one older, one younger – let her tag along, bring her skills.

“I would just sign up for anything. I played with all the guys in rec league, and I was the only girl,” she says. “I grew up in Stanley, and I have a younger brother and we were always on the same team, and I always made All-Stars. In a small town, it didn’t bother them. They didn’t offer any girls programs at the time.

“I was just one of the boys, and I wanted that, my parents wanted that, and they didn’t treat me any different.”

Brooke Wilkinson played basketball, mostly, but also softball and track and field, because she craved competition. Her first girls-only team was sixth grade basketball.

But it was basketball that became an essential accessory, like toting your lucky pocketknife everywhere, even on Sundays. She needed to play it, coach it.

“Sometimes, especially when we went to All-Stars, they realized I was a girl, but that was being around teams from other counties. It definitely helped with my competitive side. I’m crazy competitive,” she says. “I think it helped with other things, like getting athlete of the year, and getting a scholarship.”

Wilkinson, who turns 37 in August, played for Stanley Junior High (a.k.a Middle School); East Gaston High and Gardner-Webb, on a full ride, where she was a four-year starter. She coached at Wingate University – where she earned a Master’s – and Mars Hill, in Mars Hill,

N.C.; at Gardner-Webb in Boiling Springs; Gaston Day School; Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn.; and Virginia University of Lynchburg.

In between, the basketball ended once, in 2012.

She took a job at her family’s business.

But the sport pulled like a magnet, and in 2013 she went back.

Her journey that started in Stanley now led to Gaston Day School, then Lincoln Memorial, as associate head coach and recruiting coordinator. It ended, for the last time, in 2016 in Lynchburg after a year as head women’s coach and senior women’s athletic administrator/ associate athletic director. She had the most wins, ever, in one season that year and was a college professor. One of her courses was organizational leadership.

Wilkinson drove home, to Davidson.

After a short break, she became Chief Financial Officer of Wilkinson Family Incorporation, the umbrella of her family’s two car lots, finance company and real estate interests. She worked with her dad, Jeff Wilkinson, and brothers Kevin and Tyler.

“I took six months off and didn’t work anywhere,” she says. “I visited people, traveled to Myrtle Beach for a month to visit my grandma, hung out with my nephews, honestly just laid low.”

Then the phone rang.

It was the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was very shocked, very humbled,” she says.

It had been 20 years since she joined Stanley’s basketball, softball (she played shortstop) and track teams, and was named MVP of each. She was the county Division II track meet MVP in 1998 and the school’s Athlete of the Year for 1997-98.

At East Gaston, she totaled 1,265 points, 572 rebounds and 384 assists as a 5-foot-8 point guard and graduated as the secondhighest girls team scorer in school history. The night she joined the 1,000-point club, coach Ernie Bridges said, “She is one of the most athletic individuals I’ve coached in my 14 years, male or female.”

She was MVP in softball in 2002, her senior year, and made the All-Charlotte Observer Team and was an All-Charlotte Observer Scholar Athlete. She also was senior class president.

“I’m never the kind of person to do nothing. If I had free time, I’d fill it with something else, so I was lucky to be voted class president. My mom (Sharon Bryant) is a very academic person, and she wasn’t going to let my academics fall because

of sports,” Wilkinson says. “She definitely helped me.”

In her first game at Gardner-Webb, she led the team with 14 points. Her senior year, 2006, she was on the honor roll, won the Coaches Award, made the Atlantic Sun Conference All-Academic Team and led the team to its first tournament championship game in school history.

“I know kids whose dream is to be a D1 athlete. That was mine. I was going to do it no matter what,” she says. “But, it’s a whole other level. We weight-trained. We conditioned at 5 a.m. We had study hall for two hours. It was a job within a job. Other college students get weekends to go home. We had two-a-days on weekends, or were flying to a game. There are two things that are important to me, and that’s Jesus Christ and family, and that’s why I chose Gardner-Webb, because it’s a Christian school.”

Her first coaching job was point-guard coach at Wingate University from 2006 through 2008. One of her players, Anna Atkinson, was 2008 Regional Player of the Year, the season the team made the NCAA Division II Tournament Elite Eight.

While point guard coach and recruiting coordinator at Mars Hill from 2008 through 2010, player Brittany Young was the leading scorer in the South Atlantic Conference.

Wilkinson returned to Gardner-Webb as recruiting coordinator/ assistant for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons. The women won the Big South title in 2011 and made their firstever appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

During her short break in 2012, Wilkinson thought she could relax.

Didn’t happen.

“I wasn’t ready,” she says. She took on Gaston Day and had an undefeated (10-0) conference season, 23-6 record and was Southern Piedmont Athletic Association Conference Coach of the Year.

Then came Lincoln Memorial, as associate head coach (2014-15) and, finally, Lynchburg.

“Honestly, I was about 30 when I went back to Gaston Day, then Lincoln Memorial, and being a college coach is fantastic –you’re living your dream, but it’s a lot of hours. Your whole life goes into coaching, taking care of your team, travelling all over the world. And it’s fun, until you realize that in two months, you’ve only been at your house two nights.”

Her sports philosophy guides her day-to-day life:

“The first thing is attitude. Was there a good attitude? How did they respond if they missed a shot or made a mistake? Before you even look at talent, look at attitude,” she says, “because every person wants to play. If they struggled, were they giving it their all? Recruit the person, not just the athlete.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

Stanley Junior High/Middle School 1996-1998: Softball, girls track and girls basketball Most Valuable Player, 199798; County Division II track meet MVP, 1998; Stanley Athlete of the Year, 1998.

East Gaston High School 1998-2002: Three-time crosscountry MVP 1999, 2000, 2001; All-Conference volleyball, 2000; All-Conference cross country, softball and basketball, 2000, 2001, 2002; All-Gazette basketball 2001, 2002; Coaches award 2000-01 and Best Offense award 200102, basketball; Best Defense, softball 2000; Warrior Award, softball, 2001; MVP softball, 2002; Gazette All-Tournament, and Charlotte Observer All-Tournament, softball, 2002; East Gaston Female Athlete of the Year, 2002.

Gardner-Webb (player) Class of 2006: Four-year starter; third in G-W Div. I history with 106 games played; Most Versatile player 2005; 2006 Atlantic Sun Conf. All-Academic team; 2006 Coaches Award; Team was conference tournament runner-up in first conference title game in Div. 1 history, 2006.

Wingate University 2006-2008: Assistant coach, 2006-07, 2007-08; NCAA Div. II South Atlantic Conference runner-up 2007; conference champion 2008; regional champion 2008; NCAA Div. II Tournament Elite Eight, 2008.

Mars Hill University 2008-2010: Recruiting coordinator/ assistant coach; college professor; NCAA Div. II South Atlantic Conference Tournament quarterfinalist; Top 25 for Division II team GPA.

Gardner-Webb University (coach) 2010-2012: Recruiting coordinator/ assistant coach. Big South Championship, 2011; First-ever NCAA Div. I Tournament appearance, 2011; Player Dominique Hudson invited to WNBA draft, signed professional contract overseas.

Gaston Day School 2013-2014: Season record 23-6 and undefeated (10-0) in Southern Piedmont Athletic Assn. Conference; N.C. Independent Schools 2A State Tournament quarterfinals; Conference Coach of the Year 2014.

Lincoln Memorial University 2014-2015: Associate head coach/ recruiting coordinator; NCAA Div. II South Atlantic Conference Tournament quarterfinals.

Virginia University of Lynchburg 2015-2016: Senior women’s athletic administrator/ associate athletic director; college professor; head coach; most school wins in one season.

scottiE holdEn

Think fast… Got a second? This wrestling match is over

There is a word used in the South for the act of shoving work and responsibilities aside in favor of freely and nonchalantly being idle with time.

The word is “loafering,” a version of “loafing,” which simply means going slowly at one’s own pace, elsewhere, with no regard for obligations, or clocks.

Scottie Holden, as an athlete, was not one for loafering. A wrestler at Stanley Middle School and East Gaston High School in the mid-1980s, he was quick – sometimes excessively quick – and left opponents pinned before they had time to get their strategy adjusted. On your mark, set…match over.

During Holden’s junior year in 1984, East Gaston Coach Doug Smith complained about, of all things, how fast he finished his matches and got back to the bench. “He got on to me, because my first 22 matches was first-period pin. And he kept telling me

I needed to go into the second or third round, because when I got to State it was going to go longer,” Holden says. “So my State final that I won, I did it in 1 minute 38 seconds.”

Smith coached East Gaston from 1978 through 1991, a year that ended in a state title. He knows a bit about timing.

“He was one of the most physical wrestlers I ever coached,” Smith says. “He physically beat up everyone he wrestled. He pinned three out of four at the State Championships, and he pinned a kid in the finals who was about as physical and tough as you’d see.”

Holden wrestled before North Carolina high schools were divided by attendance size. There wasn’t any 1A, 2A, and so on. Everyone was in the same batch. “In later years, they split schools into four classifications, but with him, there was only one state champ in each weight class. Back in that day, you had to go through everybody to win, and he was the first to do that.”

Holden won his state title at 108 pounds.

Being quick, and athletic, helps when you’re the little guy

“I got started in wrestling with my brother, who was a year and three months older than me,” Holden says. “And, don’t laugh, but we were both small-framed and we played Little League baseball, him as a left-handed pitcher and me as a catcher. And when we got to middle school our stature for being ball players was not equivalent to what was needed.”

So Scottie and Jerry joined the wrestling team. “I won the county championship all three years,” Scottie Holden says. “Seventh, eighth and ninth grade, I won every year. My brother was close to the same weight class, and we pushed each other; we drove each other hard.”

Having a brother along helps in transitioning to high school, too. “When you go from middle school to high school, you’re already nervous and scared, and when you’re on the starting (wrestling) team as a ninth-grader, and you’re competing against 11th- and 12th-graders, it’s definitely a challenge. He was my motivator. We pushed each other.”

Holden’s accomplishments as an athlete and later as a coach led to his induction in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame. “I never even thought of it before,” he says. “I never looked for any publicity. I’m just me. Worked hard all my life.”

That junior year, 1984, was a year for work. Holden says he’s the only East Gaston wrestler to win a true state championship, when all state schools competed without divisions. “There were 15 weight classes, but you had 25 or 30 people on a team. If your record didn’t allow you to qualify for Sectionals at the end of the season, you didn’t go,” he says. “The first round, there were 16 in each weight class and if you got beat you was done.”

Holden was quick away from the matt, too. If making weight was an issue, he could drop it like … now

Mount Holly SportS

“When it was needed to lose 10 pounds during school, I had gotten out of class to lose weight… back in the day,” he says. “I could lose 10 pounds in a school day to compete. The plastic bags, the sweats… I’m glad they don’t allow that now.”

Holden’s senior year, 1985, didn’t go as planned. “I got sick and I had ruptured a blood vessel in my stomach, but I still made it to State,” he says. “My doctor advised me not to go, but I went anyway. I was too weak, and I lost out.” Still, colleges took notice. Chattanooga, Winthrop, Gardner-Webb, and he thought a long time about making the move to Tennessee.

“But I didn’t go,” he says. “I think that, in a way, if your mindset and heart isn’t in it, don’t do it. That is not a sport where you can get help, like have someone tackle someone or whatever. It’s a team sport, but it’s individual. So if your mind and heart is not in it, don’t pursue it.”

Holden pursued coaching, instead.

He was an assistant at Stanley Middle before he coached Mount Holly Middle School in 2002 and 2003, first as an assistant then as head coach. “I led them to their first championship title for Gaston County. Mount Holly had a team for 17 years and had never won,” he says. “I just wanted to work with the kids. I wasn’t interested in being in front of anybody. There’s a lot of kids I’ve coached through the years in Mount Holly, good kids.”

His son, Scottie Holden Jr., took over competition duties for his dad. “My oldest son went through Mount Holly and never had one point scored against him. I was amazed,” he says. “Never seen that before in my life. To see anyone in middle school never get one point scored on them.

“We won some matches 96-0, a perfect score. I told my team, I didn’t think that had ever been done in history. And the second year I coached, we beat another team 96-0.

“Scottie was a born-and-bred wrestler and started in the fifth grade, and we were actually invited to a tournament in Randolph County, and they invited our AAU team in Mount Holly,” Holden says. “My son was in sixth grade and beat an eighth-grader for the 80-pound weight class, and he only weighed 68 pounds. The kid from Randolph, his daddy was the head coach, and they had won the championship in that county for the last three years. But Scottie was 10 to 12 pounds lighter, and he beat him by decision.

“It was a big upset. I ran out on the matt and picked him up and hugged him. I didn’t care if I was disqualified or not. He also won a championship in seventh and eighth grade and was MVP for the Gaston County tournament.”

Looking back, Holden credits his parents – Jerry Holden Sr. and Helen Holden – and his children, his girls Tiffany and Carmen and sons Scottie and Calen. And his brother, Jerry. And Kirk Wells, the East Gaston assistant coach. “He was great with kids, and he pushed us more in a way like a comedy-type coach,” he says. “He made practices great.”

Holden left the sport for a role with Hoechst Celanese’s Mount Holly facility, mostly working with Oil of Olay production that sent bulk product to Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati. He says he put in “29.83 years, and retired and built a big shop behind my shop.”

He can be found, most days, out back in that shop, working on a FedEx truck for Mutschler, Inc., which contracts throughout the southeast for FedEx Ground. He’ll do the maintenance, change out a transmission, service the vehicles. He’s quick to solve issues and take care of business.

But if he’s not there… he may have gone wandering to reminisce about how he’s worked hard all his life.

He’ll be back soon. He’s just off somewhere loafering. ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

• County Middle School Champion – 19801982 (7th, 8th and 9th grade)

• State Tournament qualifier – 1983-1985 (10th, 11th, 12th grade)

• State Champion, 108-pound class – 1984 (junior year)

• Coach, Stanley Middle school

• Assistant coach and coach, Mount Holly Middle School, 2002-2003

• Won State title with MHMS

1992 East gaston WREstling

No Time to Lose

East Gaston wrestling doesn’t let change interfere with State title

The year is 1992.

The Olympic Games are in Barcelona, Spain. Bill Clinton is elected president. Jay Leno debuts on “The Tonight Show,” and IBM introduces a laptop, the ThinkPad 700C.

“Barney & Friends” premiers on TV and, in better news, the Chicago Bulls win their second consecutive NBA title.

In Mount Holly, the East Gaston High School wrestling team – which graduated six members, including four 1991 state finalists and underwent a coaching change – patches its pieces together and wins another Class 4A state championship.

“It was one of those things we wanted to continue and defend that title,” says Cain Beard, a junior 112-pounder. “We had a legendary coach (Doug Smith) retire, and we were young and had to kind of mesh together. It took a lot of adjustment, because of our having been used to doing things a certain way. And this new coach comes in, and we had to get to know each

other and figure it out.” The new coach was Bryan Lingerfelt, who at 23 was on the borderline of being a peer vs. being authority. And Smith, who led the team to a 22-0 record and Class 4A state title the year before and had coached for 13 seasons, was still in the building, down the hall.

“I was just a young coach that was hoping to help young men and East Gaston,” Lingerfelt says. “I saw it as an opportunity to help. The success we had I’m sure was unexpected, but that is what made it so special and what made these young men special that season.”

“Coach Smith was still teaching at the school, and all of us would go talk to him about strategy, but it was awkward for us,” says Beard, who coached as several high schools before taking his current role in 2008 as head coach at Rock Hill High School. “It was an awkward situation (for Lingerfelt) to follow a legend. When I got to Rock Hill, I heard about how great the teams were in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I kind of get the feeling of what Bryan must have felt. I know Bryan heard it from us: ‘That’s not how it was done!’ And I heard it at Rock Hill.”

Lingerfelt was a student-teacher as East Gaston in 1990 and helped coach football. He was hired at Surry Central High

Front Row L-R: Brian Stewart, Brian Anderson, Tim Hawkins, Darrell Stewart, Jody Cherry, Cain Beard, David Laws

Middle Row L-R: Bryan Lingerfelt Coach, Tim Turner, Jeremiah Brunson, Bart Davis, Brent Harrelson, Steven Carpenter, Shelton Campbel, Sean Anderson, Patrick Beatty

Back Row L-R: Nicer Young, Jason Marlowe, Fred Dryer, Ben Mastro, Bartley Corzine, Gary Boggs, Mitch Hurst, Brad Ham

School after graduation from Appalachian State University in Boone, then was asked to return to East Gaston to coach wrestling for 1991-92.

For what it accomplished in 1992, the wrestling team is inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

The group went 14-1, the only loss coming at Ashbrook in the regular season – an outcome that was reversed in the state finals.

“Ashbrook and us, at the time, were the two premier programs in the area, and we went to their place and had to deal with some lineup issues – I don’t remember what it was – and we took a loss,” Beard says. “And sometimes a loss is a good thing. I’ve always said as a coach, if you go undefeated I need to make the schedule tougher.”

On the bus ride home, he says, the team pondered how to use the loss to their advantage. “Our goal as a team was not so much to avenge the loss but to put yourself in a position to win a state title. And we had done that, that night. We were going for our third state title.”

“I remember that bus ride as being quiet. I remember some guys crying,” says Brent Harrelson, a junior who wrestled at 171. “Whether we wanted to admit it nor not, Ashbrook was a very tough match. They were our rivals, and there was mutual respect, whether we wanted to admit it or not. It was important to beat those guys, then all of a sudden we had this mark on our record and we thought, we can’t do this.”

“The loss did bring the team together,” Lingerfelt says. “I believe Bart Davis may have said something to rally the guys. Losing to Ashbrook hurt their feelings, and they could have gone the other way as well, but they had a ‘tradition’ they wanted to continue.”

The Warriors beat Ashbrook 47-13 in the state Western final on February 6 to advance to the 4A dual-team title. It was Ashbrook’s first loss of the season.

On the night of the state final title match vs. Eastern winner Orange High (23-2), from Hillsborough, Beard says the term “three-peat” was “being thrown around. The (Chicago) Bulls didn’t do theirs until the next year, but the term was out there. And it was on our mind.”

“There was a certain standard we held ourselves to,” Beard says. “It’s about putting ourselves in a position to win a state title. That’s what we do. All of us understood how we had to do it, getting everyone mentally prepared and on the same page to be in that situation.”

East Gaston won 30-25.

“Before the match, we said don’t let anybody come in here and take it from us,” Lingerfelt said after the win. “That’s all I tried to do, keep the tradition of the program going. I just tried to guide it along.”

Following Harrelson’s pin at to give East Gaston the lead, Bart Davis (189) clinched the victory with one match remaining with a 10-5 win, making an Orange comeback mathematically impossible.

“Wrestling at a higher weight, especially toward the end of a match, is especially stressful when it’s close,” Harrelson says, “and all you can think of is, don’t let your nerves get in the way of what you’re trying to do. And that’s what it was.”

Orange took a 6-0 lead early, but decisions by Beard, Darrell Stewart (125) and Jody Chery (119) gave East Gaston a 10-6 lead. After Orange tied it at 12, Brian Stewart (140) won his match by pin and Shelton Camp (152) won 2-1 to improve his record to 27-0-1.

Harrelson, 45 now, says winning the championship was “surreal.”

“It was awesome. We were happy,” he says. “I can’t tell you how cool that was.” ■

— By Kathy Blake

Career Highlights

East Gaston 1992 Wresting Team:

David Laws (103)

Caine Beard (112)

Jody Cherry (119)

Darrell Steward (125)

Tim Hawkins (130)

Brian Anderson (135)

Brian Stewart (140)

Sean Anderson (145)

Shelton Camp (152)

Steven Carpenter (160)

Brent Harrelson (171)

Bart Davis and Jeremiah Brunson (189)

Nicer Young (Hwt).

Season record: 14-1

2019 MHHOF Banquet

Mount Holly SportS

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 developing plans to fund college scholarships for deserving local students.

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

Mount Holly SportS

The Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame For its continued support.

Mount Holly SportS

In 2021

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

Mt. Holly Community

Relief Organization

Mt. Holly

Middle School Football

Stuart Cramer

High School Basketball

Ida Rankin Elementary

Safety Patrol

Home of the Road Runners

East Gaston

High School Baseball

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 led 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. e MHSHOF has worked out a process of displaying inductee sports memorabilia at the Mount Holly Historical Society for the bene t of the community.