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The years do take their toll

By Roy Waters | The News Herald

Published: July 7, 2009

The Glen Alpine community lost two more members of its championship high school basketball team of 1951 with the recent deaths of Dr. John Giles and Eddie Epley.
Two other members of the team, Joe Billy Roper and Charles Bennett, passed away in recent years.
During the regular season in '51, the Green Wave went 13-2, with victories over Morganton, Valdese and Hildebran before losing in the state playoffs.
The '51 team was one of the best ever at the West Burke school and Bennett and Giles were two of the best to ever wear the green and white. Giles, who went by John Henry in those days, went on to play college ball at Pfieffer College. Bennett, nicknamed "Hoof," played on the JV team at Appalachian State.
After medical school, Giles had a very distinguished career as a surgeon both in the U.S. Navy and at home in Burke County. Other members of coach Jug Wilson's '51 team included Dale Herron, Max Hemphill and Virgil Pipes.
Glen Alpine was known for its football teams in those days but the school also had a championship basketball team in 1958, and other fine teams in 1963 and 1973.
A former Glen Alpine football standout, Bo Taylor, lost his mom last week. She was one of the finest Christian ladies I've ever known and along with her late husband, Guy, was part of the Green Wave faithful of another era.
ACC sports
The Atlantic Coast Conference has been known as a basketball league from its beginning in the mid 1950's.
Member schools that made up the ACC had been longtime Southern Conference schools and some enjoyed success nationally in other sports.
Duke had the finest football team in the country in 1938. The Blue Devils went undefeated, untied and unscored on in the regular season but lost in the last minutes of its bowl game, 7-3.
Wake Forest fielded one of the finest baseball teams in the country just after World War II and one of our local coaches of the 50s and 60s, the late Charlie Miller, came from Charleston S.C., to Wake to play on that team. He was a fine coach and mentor to current Burke Legion coach Ron Swink. During that same time, Arnold Palmer enrolled at Wake Forest and led the Demon Deacons to elite status in college golf. A North Carolina native, Harvie Ward, played his college golf at UNC-Chapel Hill at the same time and matched Palmer shot for shot during their college days.
However, it took ACC basketball teams to bring us national championships. When they did, it wasn't long until Wake Forest won a NCAA crown in golf.
More and more, golf is gaining in stature in the ACC among our men's teams and also Duke's ladies' team. The latest example of this is the victory of Lucas Glover, a former Clemson University All-American, in the US Open. With that crown, he is our nation's best.
Look for more good news from the ACC golf scene soon.

Roy Waters is a sports columnist for The News Herald. Waters was baseball and basketball coach at Salem High School from 1955-66, where his teams won 18 championships. In 2007, he was inducted into the Burke County Sports Hall of Fame.