Prep notebook: Apex reveals its first hall of fame class

Twelve selections make up the inaugural Apex High School/Apex Consolidated High School Sports Hall of Fame, which will be inducted at halftime of this week’s home football game against Fuquay-Varina.

The oldest two members are Jim and Joe Mills, who graduated in 1938 and led Apex to the Class B championship game. Both later played baseball at N.C. State and were ACC officials. Both are NCHSAA hall of famers.

J.E. Wilson (class of 1962) is the only pick from Apex Consolidated High School. He won the NCHSAA Gold Whistle award given to distinguished officials in 2000 and was inducted into the Shaw University Hall of Fame as a baseball player in 1996.

Ricky Olive (1976) played two seasons in the NFL after playing offensive line at N.C. State and Georgia Tech.

Basketball standout Anthony Byrd (1980) later played for Bobby Cremins at Georgia Tech.

Lisa Cobb Leslie (1981) was a dominant four-year player in girls basketball. Now you know where former McDonald’s All-American and N.C. State player C.J. Leslie and Maryland women’s player Kiara Leslie got their athletic gifts from.

Eileen Duley Patrick (1992) won individual diving championships all four years and helped the Cougars to the 1991 state swimming and diving team championship, the first in school history.

Amy Dodd Calhoun (2007) finished her career as the top girls basketball scorer in school history and was captain of the 2007 state championship girls soccer team.

Andie Cozzarelli (2008) was an outstanding distance runner and soccer player who won five state titles in indoor and outdoor track and was a four-time 4A runner-up in cross country. She also played on the 2007 girls soccer state title team.

Three coaches are included in the class: former AD Ed Tindal, former girls basketball coach Scott Campbell and current track and field/cross country coach Roy Cooper.

NCHSAA awards: The N.C. High School Athletic Association handed out two awards during last week’s regional meetings. The Charlie Adams Distinguished Service Award is given to coaches and the Special Person Award may go to someone not in coaching or teaching.

Winning the Charlie Adams award were: former North Pitt athletics director, as well as football, wrestling and golf coach Ron Butler (Region 1), who is now the Pitt County Schools AD; former Hillside athletics director Bob Hill (Region 3), who now works in Vance County; former Triton principal and NCHSAA president Brooks Matthews (Region 4).

The winners of the Special Person Award were Cardinal Gibbons sports information director and longtime high school sports writer Alex Bass (Region 3) and Jason Cox of the Carolinas Golf Association.

Locals in the Ryder Cup: Erstwhile rivals Emilia Migliaccio of Athens Drive and Gina Kim of Chapel Hill found that working together provided them with their greatest successes to date when they helped the United States girls win the Junior Ryder Cup for the fifth straight time last week at Interlachen Country Club in Minnesota.

Migliaccio went 3-0 and Kim went 2-1 in their matches as the U.S. team defeated Europe’s team, 15½-8½. Eugene Hong’s 1-up victory over Matias Honkala provided the Americans with the clinching point.

It was the largest margin of victory for the USA since a 22-2 victory in 2008.

A Cary resident and Wake Forest University commit, Migliaccio won the 2013 NCHSAA 4A girls golf title as a freshman before opting to leave high school varsity competition for junior events.

Kim, the defending 3A champ who was runner-up the year before as a freshman, has committed to play at Duke.

Lacrosse conferences: Southern Durham, Voyager Academy and Union Pines are among the schools adding varsity boys lacrosse for the upcoming season.

The major change in boys’ conferences is the joining of the PAC-6 4A schools with Pinecrest, Union Pines and Fayetteville’s Jack Britt High to make an eight-team league. Southern Durham and Voyager will join the rest of their respective Big 8 3A and North Central 1A leagues, which share a 10-team conference with Carrboro.

On the girls’ side, Cary is reinstating a varsity program this year and First Flight is adding a team for the far-flung “Conference 2,” which now stretches from Greenville to Jacksonville to the Outer Banks.

Fayetteville’s Jack Britt and Terry Sanford are adding girls’ programs and will be placed into the same conference as Pinecrest as well as PAC-6 4A, Big 8 3A and Mid-State 2A schools.

This story was originally published October 4, 2016 at 8:27 PM with the headline "Prep notebook: Apex reveals its first hall of fame class."