I don’t often find myself in firsts situations, but when I do, I try to make a special note of it. Tonight, I found myself at the Catawba County Sports Hall of Fame Banquet for the local newspaper. My first in this case was a set of photos of Jennifer Howard Wolgemuth. Jennifer is the first female to be inducted into the Catawba County Sports Hall of Fame. I’m fairly confident that she’s also the youngest person to be inducted as well. Here’s the biography that was printed in the program:

Jennifer Howard Wolgemuth

Jennifer Howard Wolgemuth won two national Elks Club foul-shooting contests while in grade school and went on to score 2,054 points during her career at Fred T. Foard High School. Those achievements helped to earn her recognition as a Kodak All-American and a six-time AAU All-American. During her junior year, she helped lead Foard to a 29-1 season and the 3A state basketball championship.

In addition, she was all-conference for four years in tennis and also ran track. As an outstanding student athlete at N.C. State, she was named second team All-ACC team twice and set a conference record for career foul shots and her three point average of 44 percent remains a conference record.

In 1997, she was awarded the Frances Naismith Award for a player 5′6″ or smaller and is enshrined into the National Basketball Hall of Fame as a recipient of this honor. In addition, her basketball jersey was retired and displayed in the gym at Fred T. Foard High School.

An Academic All-American with a 4.0 grade point average both in high school and college, Jennifer played one year of pro basketball with the Cleveland Rockers.

A resident of the Vale community, she and her husband, Wade, have two children.

Milestones are always fun to note. Today provided an interesting opportunity for another entry into the My Town collection as a new milestone was set by the Hickory Crawdads at L.P. Frans Stadium. The Hickory Crawdads started play in the South Atlantic League in 1993 as a single-A farm club of the Chicago White Sox. They are now a single-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Today’s game against the Lexington Legends (single-A affiliate of the Houston Astros) was the 14th game of the 16th season, and during today’s game, Hickory first baseman Miles Durham scored the team’s 10,000th run.

During the bottom of the sixth inning, Miles Durham doubled on a line drive into right field. The next batter to the plate, Erik Huber, reaches on a fielding error and Miles Durham advanced to third base. Hickory’s Andrew Walker grounds out to Lexington’s shortstop, but Miles Durham scored on the play to bring Hickory to the 10,000 runs scored mark.

Hickory lost the game by a score of 5-4, but the milestone was still fun to witness!

I went over to Lenoir-Rhyne College this afternoon for a softball game between the Lenoir-Rhyne Lady Bears and the Brevard Lady Trojans. It was rather cold this afternoon compared to recent days in the mid-70s. The high for the day was 44 degrees and it wasn’t quite that warm at game time this afternoon. Part of my assignment today was to shoot some feature photos for use on a photo page that will be running this Thursday. I was looking around for something to photograph that told the story of the cool weather at the game. I met Ellen Key and her dog “Sydney” braving the cool weather…

“The Blue Dock” is one of those places that holds a lot of fond memories of my childhood and teenage years.  When I was very young, this is a place my parents would take me on a hot summer day to go swimming and to play in the white sand along the shoreline.  As I got older, this place became a hangout spot for friends.  As I got even older, this is a place I would go with a folding chair, gas lantern, a cooler, and a fishing rod to sit between midnight and dawn waiting for the elusive big catfish.  The baby blue paint that has been used to cover this dock over the years is the source of the location’s name, even though it is formally known as the Lakeland Park Beach Club.  When I was in high school, all you had to do was utter the words “Blue Dock” and everyone knew where to go.  It was not entirely uncommon for the police to run us off the dock late at night because of complaints from neighbors across the street.  I’m sure we weren’t always quiet down there at night.

Growing up in this neighborhood, it wasn’t unusual to spend a Saturday afternoon here with 10 or 20 other kids.  My dog was another faithful companion to the blue dock, even though he didn’t care much for the water.  He enjoyed playing in the sand.  On certain occasions, we would toss him in the lake and he would swim to the shore, go under the dock, and not come back out for a while.  On other occasions, we would call him out to the end of the dock.  He would come running, and if the dock was wet he would slide right off the end into the water, once again causing a retreat to the shore and pouting session underneath the dock again.  One of the only times I can recall him willfully getting in the water on his own was when a duck came a little too close to the shore.  He jumped in the water and chased the duck half way across the lake.  This was also the only time I ever feared for his life at the lake.  I thought he was going to tire out and drown before he made it back to the shore.

I thought this photo would be a good addition to my “My Town” series…