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