A veritable Mount Rushmore of North Carolina college baseball coaches will highlight the 49th annual Wilson Hot Stove banquet next Tuesday, Nov. 12, at Recreation Park Community Center.
Former North Carolina head coach Mike Fox will be joined by current head coaches Cliff Godwin of East Carolina, Elliott Avent of N.C. State and Barton College’s Keith Gorman as a four-man panel to discuss and answer questions submitted beforehand from the audience.
Godwin will be pulling double duty also as the recipient of the Clyde King Excellence In Coaching Award presented by Princie King Evans, the daughter of the legendary coach, manager, scout and executive for the New York Yankees.
A Greene Central High product who played basketball for his father, Lewis; football for Spence Grantham and baseball for James R. “Rabbit” Fulghum, Godwin has taken ECU to five American Athletic Conference championships and eight NCAA Regional berths in his 10 seasons at his alma mater. Godwin has coached 14 All-Americans and 28 future MLB draft picks with the Pirates while also having more than 200 players land on the AAC All-Academic Team. The Pirates have had the highest team GPA in the American for nine straight years.
Avent, a Northern Nash High product, is the dean of college coaches in North Carolina with 27 seasons at N.C. State, where he is two wins shy of 1,000. He has presided over the most successful era in Wolfpack baseball history with two trips to the College World Series, including this year.
Like Avent and Godwin, Fox is the most successful baseball coach at UNC as the all-time wins leader there with 948 in his 22 seasons in Chapel Hill. He led the Tar Heels to seven College World Series appearances and was the second baseman on UNC’s first team to make it to Omaha in 1978. Fox, who won an NCAA Division III championship and 539 games at North Carolina Wesleyan, will be inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in early 2025.
Gorman, who just finished his fifth season at Barton, has a national championship as well after leading Cumberland County (New Jersey) College to the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III crown in 2019, just before coming to Wilson.
While at Barton, Gorman has set single-season, two- and three-year wins marks. The Bulldogs went 34-16 last spring, setting a new program benchmark.
Former East Carolina star right-hander Trey Yesavage will receive the Gaylord Perry Amateur Pitching Award on Tuesday. Yesavage is the second ECU pitcher in three years to be taken in the first round of the MLB draft, joining 2021 Gaylord Perry Award winner Gavin Williams. Yesavage was drafted No. 20 overall by the Toronto Blue Jays.
Former Hunt High star Tyson Bass, who set home run records last spring at N.C. Wesleyan on his way to being named a first-team All-American, will receive the Trot Nixon “Gamer” Award, for his grit and hustle emblematic of the award’s namesake. Bass is now at North Carolina as a graduate student for his fifth year of eligibility.
Other award recipients Tuesday will be former Wilson Prep and American Legion Post 13 standout Gage Lockhart with the Clint Faris Award, given annually to the top high school player in the area, while the City of Wilson, which is bringing professional baseball back to town in 2026, will receive the Willis Hackney Award for contributions to baseball in the community.
The Charles H. “Red” Barrett Special Achievement honors will go to Wilson Parks and Recreation’s Kelsey Newsome, who heads the Wilson City Miracle League, and two Fike High students, Christopher Hill and Pete Bolt, for their tireless generosity of time and energy to make Miracle League games a hit since the league started last year.
Eddie Thomas, a Nash County resident and a pastor at Christian Fellowship Church, will be presented the Eunice Sasser Officials Award as the top umpire in the Eastern Plains Athletic Officials Association over the past year. Thomas, a former college baseball player, has been umpiring high school games in North Carolina since 2013.
A handful of former Major League Baseball players expected to attend will include a pair of newcomers to the Hot Stove banquet. Phil Mankowski, a third baseman who broke in with the Detroit Tigers in 1976 and played six MLB seasons, and Alan Fowlkes, a right-handed pitcher with the San Francisco Giants and California Angels for parts of two seasons in the 1980s will be joined by Hot Stove regulars Mike Caldwell, John Donaldson, Dick Such and John Roper.
In addition, former Negro League player Hubert “Big Daddy” Wooten of Goldsboro is expected to be on hand Tuesday as well as coaching legend George Whitfield, former N.C. State dual-sport stars and brothers Freddie and Francis Combs and former N.C. State baseball player Alex Cheek.
There will also be a tribute to former MLB player Tommy Smith, fomer college coach Tony Guzzo and former Duke broadcaster Bob Harris, all of whom were frequent Hot Stove guests and supporters who passed away this year.
The banquet will begin at 6 p.m. promptly in the gym at the Rec but there will be a reception at the North Carolina Baseball Museum, located inside Fleming Stadium, from 4-5:15 p.m. The banquet is one of two major annual fundraisers for the museum.
The reception is free and open to the public. Tickets to the banquet are $30 each and include a catered meal from Parker’s Barbecue. They are available at the N.C. Baseball Museum, A-Plus Graphics, Dick’s Hot Dog’s and E.B. Sports.
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