The North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame announced its 2013 inductees Monday and it includes former UNC football player Kelvin Bryant, former Carolina Hurricane great Ron Francis, former UNC basketball coach and assistant Bill Guthridge and noted photographer Hugh Morton.
The 11 new members are Bryant, Francis, Guthridge, Morton (deceased), Wade Garrett, Tommy Helms, Marion Kirby, Rich McGeorge, Bob Quincy (deceased), Marty Sheets and Mildred Southern.
The class of 2013 will be honored at the 50th annual induction banquet on May 2, at the Raleigh Convention Center.
KELVIN BRYANT: The Tarboro native was one of the most explosive running backs in Carolina football history even though he was plagued throughout his four-year career at Chapel Hill with injuries. Yet for his career, Bryant averaged 5.5 yards per carry. He finished with one carry short of 600 and was at the top of his collegiate game in his sophomore and junior years. As a sophomore, he split time with Amos Lawrence at tailback giving the Tar Heels one of the most dynamic duos at the position in ACC history. For his part, Kelvin ran for 1,039 yards, including an 81-yard run against Virginia and a 199-yard game against Duke. Then he exploded onto the national spotlight as a junior getting 211 yards on 19 carries in the season opener against East Carolina, a game in which he scored an ACC-record six touchdowns. He had five more touchdowns a week later against Miami of Ohio and four in the third game against Boston College. He didn’t play in the fourth quarter in any of those games. He finished the season by averaging 6.7 yards per carry and became the school’s third all-time rusher and scorer. As a pro, he was the USFL Player of the Year in 1983 and MVP in the championship game. He also played for the Washington Redskins where his coach, Joe Gibbs, once said, “When he’s healthy, he’s the best I’ve ever seen at coming out of the backfield.” He won a Super Bowl ring with the Skins for the 1987 season.
RON FRANCIS: A Canadian and a National Hockey League Hall of Fame inductee, Francis has found a home in the Raleigh area where he has lived for more than a decade. Now an associate head coach and director of player personnel for the Hurricanes, Francis retired from the ice after the 2004-05 season. Today he stands second only to Wayne Gretzky in career assists (1,249), fourth in career points (1,798), third in games played (1,731) and 21st in career goals (549). He won two Stanley Cups and his No. 10 shirt has been retired by the Carolina Hurricanes. In his career, he was selected to the NHL All-Star team four times, won the Alka-Seltzer Plus Award, the Frank J. Selke Trophy, the Lady Byng Trophy three times and the King Clancy Memorial Trophy. He still ranks No. 1 all time in Whalers/Hurricane franchise history in points, goals, assists and games played.
BILL GUTHRIDGE: The ultimate assistant coach, Bill was Dean Smith’s first lieutenant for 30 years and succeeded Smith as the head coach of the Tar Heels. In his three seasons at the helm, the Tar Heels had records of 34-4, 24-10 and 22-14 for a cumulative 90-28 mark. He was named National Coach of the Year in 1998 after leading UNC into the Final Four. As an assistant to Smith, he declined repeated opportunities to leave the side of his old friend to head up programs on his own. At Carolina, he was famous for his ability to teach the fundamentals of pivot play to the big men in the program, and he was the team’s shooting coach.
WADE GARRETT: The Lexington native was the premier fast-pitch softball pitcher in an era when men’s softball was enjoying its greatest popularity in North Carolina. Wade pitched for 20 years for Champion Paper of Canton and recorded 358 victories (among them an astonishing 40 no-hitters), had but 83 losses and in one streak of just over 78 innings was unscored upon. He was a member of the All-State or All-South team 15 times, was all-region ten times, appeared in ten world tournaments and was also chosen all-world. He is a member of the North Carolina Softball Hall of Fame. Wade remains a resident of Lexington.
TOMMY HELMS: The Charlotte native was an integral part of Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” of the 1960s and 1970s manning the second base position on a team that included Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. Helms was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1966 and was a member of the National League All-Star team in 1967 and 1968. As one of the most reliable infielders in the senior circuit, Helms won Gold Gloves in 1970 and 1971. Though he is remembered as a Cincinnati Red, he also saw time with Houston, Pittsburgh and Boston. He had a career batting average of .269 and wound up managing the Reds in parts of two seasons as the successor to Rose.
MARION KIRBY: A 1964 graduate of Lenoir-Rhyne College, where he played on a national championship football team, Kirby has established himself as one of North Carolina’s top high school coaches. After a year as a graduate assistant at East Carolina, Kirby became the head football coach in Edenton where he posted a mark of 59-14-3 and won three conference titles. He then moved on to Page High School and established the Pirates as a state powerhouse for more than 20 years. His Page teams went to the playoffs 16 times and won 12 league titles. They won state 4-A championships in 1980, 1983, 1984 and 1985 and were runners-up in 1982. In all, 25 of his teams won at least seven games and his career record stands at 278-65-8. He was selected to build Greensboro College’s football program from scratch and later became athletic director at Guilford College. He is a member of the Lenoir-Rhyne Sports Hall of Fame and for many years served as secretary-treasurer of the North Carolina Coaches Association.
RICH McGEORGE: A 1971 Elon graduate, McGeorge was a first-round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers for whom he starred as a tight end for nine seasons. He caught 175 passes in his pro career, most of them from legendary Bart Starr, for 2,370 yards. He played both football and basketball at Elon and at one time held the national NAIA record for catches, 224, and total yards, 3,486. He held most of Elon’s other passing-catching records as well and won numerous all-conference, all-district and All-American awards. He also led the Elon basketball team in scoring in 1969 with an average of 16.8 and was an all-conference selection for the 22-8 Christians his senior season. When he graduated, McGeorge held Elon’s career field goal percentage record at 59.8 percent and was the team’s leading rebounder with 688 boards. He was part of a team that made 51 consecutive free throws in a district playoff game against N.C. A&T. He served as an assistant football coach at both Duke and Florida then spent seven years on the staff of Don Shula of the Miami Dolphins. He is a member of the Elon Sports Hall of Fame, the NAIA Football Hall of Fame and in the summer of 2012 was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
MARTY SHEETS: One of the most highly decorated Special Athletes in the world. He holds 250 Special Olympic medals in an array of sports at the local, state, national and world level. He has won gold, silver or bronze in swimming, skiing, tennis and power lifting at the world level, and golf at the 2007 national level. He and the late singer John Denver were chosen to lead the U.S. delegation into the World Games opening ceremonies in 1987, he was featured on ABC Wild World of Sports in 1991, began a 15-year run on the golf committee of Special Olympics in 1993, chosen to sit with President Clinton at the opening of the 1995 World Games and in 2007 he was chosen by Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver to join her and four other athletes in a Special Olympics portrait. It hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington. A number of state and community awards have been conferred upon Marty including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine in 2000, and the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Division of vocational Rehabilitation Services. The PGA Tour honored him as its Volunteer of the Year award in 2006.
MILDRED F. SOUTHERN: The matriarch of tennis in the South, and particularly North Carolina. The Winston-Salem native has served North Carolina and Southern tennis as well as the USTA in general in a variety of capacities from association president, to referee, to ranking committees and as a competitor who has been at the top of her game in various age groups for years. She has won a variety of national, regional and state championships and was nationally ranked almost continuously from 1983 through 1997. Has been presented more than a dozen national, regional and state honors. Southern won state titles in 1971 and 1973 and won state championships every year from 1975 through 1997, frequently three or more. She also won Southern championships every year from 1981 through 1997. She owns 16 national titles. Southern is arguably North Carolina’s all-time most decorated tennis champion and volunteer. The top award for teams competing in Southern Tennis is the Mildred F. Southern Cup, and the building that houses the North Carolina Tennis Association in Greensboro is named for Southern and her husband.
The Sports Hall of Fame, established in 1963, is on permanent exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History.