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.
After the 2007 Major League Baseball draft, Caldwell County’s Madison Bumgarner will be in Hickory this week. He won’t be carrying a bat though. Madison will be in the pitching rotation for the Augusta GreenJackets in this week’s series in Hickory against the Hickory Crawdads. Madison is scheduled to pitch in Thursday night’s game at L.P. Frans Stadium. It will be interesting to see what sort of crowd shows up at the game on Thursday night. I’m expecting a larger base of fans for Bumgarner than for the Hickory Crawdads :)
Welcome back Madison!
Copyright - Manuel Librodo
I consider myself lucky to be a part of a truly global community of photographers via the internet. I have made a lot of friends around this third stone from the sun over the last six years or so. Manny is a 42-year old resident of Bankok, Thailand. I first met Manny through the DPChallenge.com website, where he, like myself, was participating in occasional photography competitions. Watching him grow into what he is today has been an incredible adventure. Even though Manny still considers himself a hobbyist photographer, his work is gaining worldwide recognition, and he’s conducting workshops internationally. Manny’s ability to capture the essence of human nature through the lens of his camera never ceases to amaze me. He loves to travel, and he’s constantly grabbing some of the most phenomenal photojournalistic-style portraits and candids I have ever seen. Manny cites Steve McCurry as one of his sources of inspiraiton, which is obvious in some of his work, but Manny has, in my opinion, stepped out and become a unique source of inspiration on his own. Click on the image above to visit Manny’s online gallery and be amazed as much as I have been.