BOONE, N.C. — With a class of athletes representing five sports and four decades, Appalachian State celebrated the Hall of Fame induction of Brittany Zahn Arnold, Jim Wilcox, Cedric Felton, David Mor and Bruce Schlegel last weekend.
Each member of the 2017 class addressed the large crowd gathered inside the Holmes Center during the Hall of Fame breakfast on Sept. 9, and all five inductees were recognized at halftime of that day's home football game.
Thirty-one years earlier, Felton had played his final football game in an App State uniform. A member of the 1986 team that captured the Mountaineers' first Southern Conference football championship, he had 128 tackles that season and 495 for his career. That was a record total at the time, and it now ranks third in school history.
Felton, who made as many as 21 tackles in a single game, looked at his Hall of Fame plaque and joked, "I had hair then." He grew up in upstate New York and was recruited by Syracuse, but he passed on a walk-on opportunity to accept a scholarship offer from App State.
"I had never been to the mountains or to the South for that matter," said Felton, who is now in his 28
th year as a police officer in Rochester, N.Y. "I was welcomed, and I was afraid to fail. I wanted to come down, graduate and get my (criminal justice) degree. I also had a lot of pride and wanted to play. I didn't want it to be just a favor to my (high school) head coach. I wanted to earn my keep here."
With its state-of-the-art video board, the Holmes Center is home to App State's basketball and volleyball teams. A sweet-shooting player at Appalachian from 1963-66, Wilcox played in a different era.
He averaged 19.6 points during the 1965-66 season and earned All-Carolinas Conference honors.
"It means everything because my teammates and family were here," said Wilcox, who grew up in Lenoir and now lives in Wilkesboro. "It's always a great honor to be here."
Zahn Arnold began her App State volleyball career five years after the Holmes Center opened, as she was in Boone from 2005-07. Named the 2007 Southern Conference player of the year, she ranks third in App State history with 1,391 kills and ninth with a hitting percentage of .248.
"I loved playing in the Convocation Center and loved home games," said Zahn Arnold, who works for an insurance company in Charlotte and visits App State from time to time to do campus recruiting. "There was such a good support system here, I just loved it."
Varsity Gym, the home for App State wrestling, opened in 1968, a year after Schlegel arrived in Boone from Woodbridge, Va.
As a 325-pound heavyweight, he was a two-time NAIA national runner-up with a career record of 58-7-1, including an 11-6 mark in four national tournament appearances.
"This makes me think about how important wrestling was in my life," Schlegel said. "Coming down here to Appalachian, I'm from a large family and was the only one who ever went to college. Wrestling gave me the opportunity to go.
"I was truly blessed, and I still am now."
The longest, most emotional Hall of Fame speech belonged to Mor, who left Israel and entered the United States for the first time in 1974 as he flew from New York to Winston-Salem so he could begin college at Appalachian State. He played soccer for the Mountaineers from 1974-75.
Named the 1975 Southern Conference player of the year, he scored 51 goals while leading App State to back-to-back SoCon Championships in his two seasons with the program.
"Back then, I was in the starting lineup of one of the best teams in Israel in the first division," Mor said. "People said, 'You are crazy. Why do you want to leave?'
"I said, 'I don't know - it's an adventure.' I think it was the best decision I ever made in my life to come and pursue my education. It's a great pleasure to be here accompanied by family and friends, and I'm talking about friends I haven't seen in 40 years. Can you imagine the feeling we have?"
For all five inductees, it was a weekend to remember.
