The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Chris Pollard, Head Baseball Coach at Duke.  Last season, in just his second year, Pollard led the Blue Devils to the ACC Tournament for the first time since 2009 as Duke finished fourth overall in the league standings. Duke’s 16 ACC wins in 2014 tied the program record as the Blue Devils finished in the top four in the conference standings for the first time since 1994. The Blue Devils cemented their status as one of the top teams in North Carolina, finishing the season 8-1 against in-state ACC rivals North Carolina, NC State, and Wake Forest. Duke finished the season with 33 wins, surpassing the 30-win plateau for the first time since 2009 and 10^th time in program history. In addition, the Blue Devils entered the national rankings, earning the No. 30 spot in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper national poll May 6. The 2014 Blue Devils earned a spot in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper’s rankings for the first time since the organization began its poll in 1998.

Prior to Duke, Pollard spent 8 years coaching at Appalachian State and 5 years at Pfeiffer University. He graduated with a B.A. from Davidson and a Master’s Degree from Mississippi State University. He and his wife, Stephanie, live in Durham with sons, Thomas and Brady.

Thanks for the info, www.GoDuke.com

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

5/6/15 – Shane Ryan, Professional Golfer and Author
5/20/15 – Kenny King,  Academic Support Director /Student Life and Campus Relations Coordinator, Duke Basketball
5/30/15 – Annual “Night Out With the Bulls”
6/3/15 – Durham Sports Club Scholar-Athlete Awards Night

Our guest speakers for this meeting will be Art Chansky and Johnny Moore, who have co-written a book called “The Blue Divide: Duke, North Carolina, and the Battle on Tobacco Road”.  According to Amazon.com, the book is a complete look at the storied basketball rivalry between the Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels, this guide is penned by two authorities on the subject—Art Chansky, a bestselling author and sports reporter who has covered the famed match up since his days as a student reporter at UNC and Johnny Moore, who has been intimately involved with Duke athletics for nearly four decades. Segmenting the various commonalities the Blue Devils and Tar Heels have shared for more than 60 years and nearly 250 meetings on the court, each chapter covers a distinct aspect of the rivalry between these two schools that stand a mere 10 miles apart. This book offers new details on long-forgotten stories as well as a chance to better understand where the pride and passion of today comes from between the two contiguous competitors.

thanks for the info, www.amazon.com!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

4/15/15 – Chris Pollard, Head Baseball Coach, Duke
5/6/15 – Shane Ryan, Professional Golfer and Author
5/20/15 – Kenny King,  Academic Support Director /Student Life and Campus Relations Coordinator, Duke Basketball

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Dave Odom, Retired College Head Basketball Coach and college basketball expert.   Odom was Head Coach at East Carolina University for 3 years, Wake Forest University for 12 years, and University of South Carolina for 7 years.

In his 12 seasons(1989–2001) as head coach at Wake Forest, Odom compiled a record of 240-132, making him the second-highest winning coach in Wake Forest history, as well as the second highest winning percentage in school history. During this time, Wake Forest earned 7 straight NCAA Tournament appearances and one National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship.  Odom was named ACC coach of the year in 1991, 1994 and 1995, and he led his team to consecutive ACC Championships in 1995 and 1996.

During his tenure at South Carolina, his team earned one NCAA tournament bid, and made three appearances in the NIT, winning the championship in 2005 and 2006. He was named SEC Coach of the Year in 2004. On January 2, 2008, Odom coached his 400th collegiate victory as a head coach. Later that month, on January 18, he announced that he would retire at the end of the 2007-2008 basketball season, his seventh at South Carolina. He coached his final game for USC on March 14, 2008, in the SEC tournament.

With the 2014 NCAA tournament coming up, this promises to be a very timely and informative meeting.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

4/1/15 – Johnny Moore & Art Chansky, Authors, “The Blue Divide”
4/15/15 – Chris Pollard, Head Baseball Coach, Duke
5/6/15 – Shane Ryan, Professional Golfer and Author

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be David Cutcliffe, Head Football Coach at Duke. David Cutcliffe, the 2013 National Coach of the Year who has earned both ACC and SEC Coach of the Year honors in a distinguished career that includes the mentoring of Super Bowl MVP quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning, was named Duke University’s 21st head football coach on December 15, 2007.

In 2013, Cutcliffe guided the Blue Devils to a school record 10 wins, including the ACC Coastal Division championship and an appearance in the 46th annual Chick-fil-A Bowl where Duke’s matchup with Texas A&M registered nearly nine million viewers to rank as ESPN’s most-watched non-BCS bowl game.  For his efforts, Cutcliffe was named the National Coach of the Year by five outlets — American Football Coaches Association, Bobby Dodd Foundation, Maxwell Football Club, Sporting News and Walter Camp Foundation — while earning his second consecutive ACC Coach of the Year citation.

In 2014, Duke’s football team finished with a 9-4 record, a season highlighted by a victory over eventual ACC Coastal Division Champion and Orange Bowl Champion, Georgia Tech. The season culminated with a third-consecutive bowl appearance against Arizona State in the Hyundai Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.

Thanks for the picture and info, www.GoDuke.com

Mark Your Calendar

3/18/15 – Dave Odom, NCAA Basketball guru
4/1/15 – Johnny Moore & Art Chansky, Authors, “The Blue Divide”
4/15/15 – Chris Pollard, Head Baseball Coach, Duke

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