City and county sports history was relived Friday when the first seven inductees into the Salisbury Rowan Sports Hall of Fame were honored.
Past great players and former and present coaching greats were honored along with one special achievement inductee during a ceremony and dinner at the Salisbury City Hall Council Chambers.
Jerry Barger, Billy Ray Barnes, Cristy Earnhardt McKinney, Joe Ferebee, Robert Pulliam and the late Spencer Lancaster were inducted for their athletic achievements, while former Post sportswriter Horace Billings was honored for his contributions to sports in the city, county and state.
Hall of Fame Committee co-chairman Scott Maddox and Wilson Cherry presented plaques to the inductees and the grandson of Lancaster, Fredrick W. Evans, following a presentation by Liz Tennent, the City of Salisbury’s committee coordinator.
Barger was a three-sport star at Boyden High School, earning All-State, All-Southern and All-America honors in football. He went on to star for Duke University, where he was the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year in 1954.
He led the Blue Devils to the 1995 Orange Bowl championship over Nebraska.
“This is indeed quite an honor to be honored by your hometown and your home county,” said Barger, who lives in Salisbury and owns Corbin Hills Golf Club.
“There are people in here that I went to school with, that coached me, that I played with and played against. It’s just a wonderful occasion to be recognized in your hometown and to be amongst the other honorees.”
Barger was coached by Ferebee in baseball at Boyden and amused the audience with a story about coming home from Duke, taking part in a baseball practice and hitting a line drive off Ferebee’s forehead while the coach was pitching batting practice.
Barger is already in the Duke Hall of Fame and on the Blue Devils’ all-time team.
Barnes, like Barger, starred in three sports at Landis High. He earned a scholarship to Wake Forest University and became the first ACC running back to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season in 1956, when he made two All-America teams.
He also played on the Demon Deacons’ 1955 NCAA championship baseball team.
Barnes went to to an all-pro career in the National Football League.
“It’s a great honor,” he said of the induction. “I’m very appreciative of the award. I’ve been very blessed.”
As for his high school days, Barnes, who lives in Landis, said, “My greatest thrill in my life was beating China Grove.”
Landis and China Grove were rivals before merging to form South Rowan High.
McKinney was the first great local female basketball player in the modern, fullcourt era, scoring over 1,000 points and grabbing over 1,000 rebounds at East Rowan High.
She earned a scholarship to N.C. State University, where she made all-state as a freshman and started four years.
“It is a great honor to be here. It’s really amazing to be a part of this. Tonight is definitely one of the most wonderful things to happen in my life,” she said.
She went into basketball coaching after playing in the Women’s Professional Basketball League and is now head coach at Rice University, where she got her team into the NCAA playoffs in 2000 for the first time in history.
“I can say that I’ve watched women’s athletics and women’s sports grow and been a part of it. It’s been fun for me to see that,” she said.
Ferebee, who lives in Misenheimer, was inducted into his seventh Hall of Fame.
Rather than talk about himself, he talked about coaching Barger, watching Barnes make a crucial play in a Legion baseball game and being friends with sportswriter Billings for a half century.
He told Barger, “I didn’t even have a headache” after getting hit by the line drive, but admitted that Barger must have had some power, because “the ball bounced all the way back to the backstop.”
Ferebee, a Mocksville native, put Salisbury on the baseball map in 1955 when he coached Boyden High and the Salisbury American Legion to state championships. His Legion club finished third in the nation. He later had three more state champions with Rowan County and finished his prep, Legion and Pfeiffer University coaching career with 1,438 victories.
Pulliam, now a high school administrator in Salisbury, is considered one of the top high school linemen ever to play in Rowan. He starred in football, wrestling and track at Salisbury High.
He was named to All-State and All-America teams and earned a scholarship to the University of Tennessee.
Pulliam went on to serve as an assistant coach and a head coach (Fayetteville State) before becoming an administrator.
He thought back to when he was 13 years old and credited his mother, Doris, with sacrificing and buying equipment for him to play football.
“I still remember it like yesterday, my first pair of football shoes,” he said.
Pulliam recalled coming home with bruised and sore arms from his first middle school practice. His mother bought him forearm pads.
“Throughout my career no one could make me take those forearms pads off, because it was a symbol of what my mother did for me,” he said.
Lancaster, a Connecticut native who died in 1996, coached Salisbury’s Price High to state football titles in 1940 and 1951. His 1940 squad had an 11-0 record, outscoring the opposition 330-0.
His coaching record was 183-50-15 in 29 1/2 seasons.
“The man was the epitome of good character,” said grandson Evans. “He was a wonderful and proud educator.”
Evans said his grandfather was tough enough to send a player to the locker room for missing a block during a game and soft enough to cry every time he heard Judy Garland sing “Over the Rainbow.”
Billings, the dean of North Carolina sports editors when he stepped down in 1989, was with the Post for 52 years as a sports editor and writer.
“This is probably the best thing I’ve ever received,” he said. “The greatest honor you can get is from your hometown people. I’ve been awarded before, because I’ve associated with these guys,” he said, referring to the other inductees.
The Hall of Fame Committee will soon begin making plans for another group of inductees to be honored in 2002.
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