Jacob Watkins (Northeast) Winner of the NCHSAA Gainey Student Scholarship Award

CLINTON, NORTHEAST GUILFORD STUDENTS EARN NCHSAA’S SEVENTH ANNUAL PAT GAINEY STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS

CHAPEL HILL—The North Carolina High School Athletic Association announced today the winners of a special award established in the name of the late Pat Gainey.

Jamison Kidd of Clinton High School and Jacob Watkins of Northeast Guilford High School have been named this year’s winners of the Gainey Student Scholarship Award. They will be honored at the NCHSAA Annual Meeting at the Smith Center on the University of North Carolina campus on May 2.

The award is in memory of Gainey, a native of Dunn who recorded a outstanding record in women’s basketball at a couple of different stops during his coaching career and was a great supporter of women’s athletics. His overall record at Pamlico was an incredible 93-6 in women’s basketball and he also coached outstanding baseball teams there. He then moved to Taylorsville, where he coached from 1955-64. His women’s basketball teams won five Western North Carolina High School Activities Association titles and at one point recorded 54 consecutive wins and an amazing 140 straight conference victories. His overall women’s basketball mark was 358-57. He was inducted into the NCHSAA Hall of Fame in 2007.

The Gainey Student Scholarship Awards are available to NCHSAA member schools in counties having a poverty rate of 20 percent or more for children 17 and under. Student scholarship recipients can be either female athletes or male baseball players meeting the established criteria, and the grants are customarily $2,000 each.

Kidd has played four years of women’s soccer at Clinton, earning a couple of all-conference designations. A talented artist and dancer, she plans to continue her education and her soccer career at Mount Olive College.

At Clinton Kidd is a member of the Beta Club, the Key Club and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes while serving as senior class vice-president. She also has volunteered in the community frequently, including working at a local hospital and with Special Olympics.

Watkins has been an excellent baseball player at Northeast Guilford, pitching for the Rams and also playing second base. He earned all-conference honors as a junior. Although his father tragically died of lung cancer and he had assume a number of duties in his home, he still has found time to coach a recreational basketball team for several years and also volunteers as a reading tutor at a local elementary school.

A member of the Beta Club and National Honor Society at Northeast, Watkins plans to study exercise science in college.

The award is made possible by a gift from Gainey’s daughter, Mrs. Berry Jo Gainey Shoen, who currently resides in California.

“This award is a wonderful tribute to the legacy of Pat Gainey and all that he did for high school athletics throughout his career,” said NCHSAA commissioner Davis Whitfield. “Jamison and Jacob are outstanding representatives of the attributes that Pat embodied and emphasized.”