The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Howie Freiling, Special Assignment Scout for the Philadelphia Phillies. Following a college career at UNC, where he set UNC’s single-season record for runs batted in (RBIs) as a junior in 1987, Freiling was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the eighth round. He spent 4 years as a player in the minor leagues with the Dodgers’ and New York Mets’ organizations, then turned to Managing in the Mets’ system for eight years.

His minor league career began with just two games in Great Falls, Montana before being bumped up to Vero Beach, where he held down the first base job for the Dodgers’ Single A team. After a solid start in 1988, he fell into a slump and later broke his arm when he was hit by a pitch. He caught on with the Mets organization, and played two years as the AA level. The next year, he went to spring training as a Triple-A player and left it as a coach, as the Mets needed a minor league coach in Columbia, S.C. Freiling jumped at the opportunity to stay in baseball. Soon, he was climbing through the minors again, this time as a managerial prospect.

After a number of years, he took a job in the Mets’ scouting department. Freiling left the Mets to join the Phillies, where childhood friend Ruben Amaro was the general manager. Amaro added some scouting duties with the Durham Bulls and Carolina Mudcats, so Freiling could spend more time at home with his wife and three children. He can often be seen at Durham Bulls’ games.

Mark Your Calendar

3/4/15 – David Cutcliffe, Head Football Coach, Duke University
3/18/15 – Dave Odom, NCAA Basketball guru
4/1/15 – Johnny Moore & Art Chansky, Authors, “The Blue Divide”

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Debbie Yow, Director of Athletics at NC State University. In four years, Yow has made significant changes to the structure, branding and outcomes of the athletics department.

Yow has hired nine new head coaches: men’s basketball coach Mark Gottfried, men’s soccer coach Kelly Findley, women’s soccer coach Tim Santoro, men’s and women’s swimming coach Braden Holloway (a former NC State swimmer), wrestling coach Pat Popolizio, softball coach Shawn Rychcik, football coach Dave Doeren, women’s basketball coach Wes Moore and renowned women’s tennis coach Simon Earnshaw. Gottfried has led the men’s basketball program to three NCAA Championship appearances in his first three seasons, including a Sweet Sixteen appearance. Holloway was named the 2013 ACC Coach of the Year after leading the men’s swimming team to a No. 15 finish at the NCAA championship, its highest since 1978-79, and the team was named the national “Breakout Team of the Season” in the prestigious College Swimming and Diving Honors Program. Rychcik, in his first two seasons, guided the Wolfpack softball team to the ACC title and two NCAA regional championship game appearances. And Moore was named the ESPNW’s ACC Coach of the Year in leading his initial Wolfpack squad to 25 wins, a Top 10 national ranking and an NCAA Tournament berth.

Yow has served as President of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and the national Division I-A Athletic Directors Association. She is a member of the National Football Foundation board of directors, and served on the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Academic Enhancement Committee, and represented the ACC on the NCAA Management Council.

Both Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education have cited Yow as being one of the 20 most influential people in college athletics. She was selected to serve on the President’s U.S. Department of Education Commission on Opportunities in Athletics to review the status of Federal Title IX regulations.

Thanks www.GoPack.com for the info!

Mark Your Calendar

2/18/15 – Howie Freiling, Special Assignment Scout, Philadelphia Phillies
3/4/15 – David Cutcliffe, Head Football Coach, Duke University
3/18/15 – Dave Odom, NCAA Basketball guru

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Mike Fox, Head Baseball Coach at UNC. Now in his 16th season as head coach at the University of North Carolina, Mike Fox has guided his alma mater to the most successful period in school history and firmly established the Tar Heels as one of the nation’s preeminent college baseball programs. Capped by six trips to the College World Series in the last eight years, Carolina has made 14 appearances in the NCAA Tournament and posted a 694-274-1 record in Fox’s 15 seasons in Chapel Hill.

Fox, who ranks first among the game’s active leaders in career winning percentage, has been recognized by several outlets as one of the nation’s top coaches in recent years. Baseball America honored Fox as its national coach of the year in 2008, and Fox’s peers – the American Baseball Coaches Association – selected him as the Atlantic Region Coach of the Year in three of the last four seasons.

Fox’s leadership and vision were instrumental in the construction of the $25.6-million Boshamer Stadium, which opened in 2009 to rave reviews as one of the finest collegiate baseball facilities in the nation. The stadium underwent another upgrade this offseason with the installation of a state of the art video board.

One of only six men to play in and then coach his alma mater to the College World Series, Fox has led Carolina to 12 consecutive trips to postseason play for the first time in school history. Fox has coached his teams to NCAA tourney play in 28 of his 30 seasons as a head coach, including a combined 14 trips to the NCAA Division I and Division III World Series. He has led Carolina to 15 College World Series victories over the last eight seasons, has either played or coached in all 17 CWS wins by the Tar Heels. Thirty-two of Fox’s former Tar Heels were on professional rosters in 2013.

Thanks for the info, www.goheels.com!

Mark Your Calendar

2/4/15 – Debbie Yow, Athletics Director, NC State University
2/18/15 – Howie Freiling, Special Assignment Scout, Philadelphia Phillies
3/4/15 – David Cutcliffe, Head Football Coach, Duke University

Happy New Year!

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Tom Higgins, renowned NASCAR storyteller. Higgins, who was a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, was the first beat writer to cover every race on the NASCAR schedule, a role he held from 1980 until his retirement in 1997. He has been named the recipient of the 2015 Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence.

He will be honored during NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony festivities on Jan. 30, 2015, and featured in an exhibit in the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Higgins’ professional newspaper career started in 1957 at the weekly Canton Enterprise in North Carolina. While at the Asheville Times in North Carolina, he covered racing for the first time. Higgins joined the sports staff at The Observer in 1964 as an outdoors writer and soon began covering stock car racing as well. He has continued to write motorsports nostalgia columns for the newspaper and its website ThatsRacin.com since his retirement.

“Tom Higgins helped establish what it means to be a NASCAR beat reporter,” said NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France. “For more than five decades, his words have told the story of NASCAR, and the people and emotions that define the sport. He has been much more than a reporter to those in the NASCAR industry — serving as friend and confidant to competitors, administrators and his fellow journalists.”

Higgins, affectionately known as “Pappy,” won the International Motorsports Hall of Fame Henry T. McLemore Award for lifetime achievement in motorsports journalism in 1980, the NMPA George Cunningham Award as writer of the year in 1987 and was named the NASCAR Bill France Award of Excellence winner in 1996. He was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame in 2011. He is also a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame Voting Panel.

Thanks to NASCAR.com for the information

Mark Your Calendar

1/21/15 – Mike Fox, Head Baseball Coach, UNC
2/4/15 – Debbie Yow, Athletics Director, NC State University
2/18/15 – Howie Freiling, Special Assignment Scout, Philadelphia Phillies