SPARTANBURG, S.C. ? The Southern Conference announced today the 11 recipients of the league’s 2008 Distinguished Service Award. Each member institution selects an honoree based on that person’s contribution to the institution. Each award winner will be honored for their contributions at the Southern Conference awards dinner in Hilton Head, S.C. on May 28, 2008.
The Distinguished Service Award program was started in 2002 as a way for the Southern Conference to recognize those individuals from its member institutions who have contributed to all aspects of the university. This year’s honorees include Tommy Sofield (Appalachian State), Ernest and Cindy Masters (College of Charleston), Dr. Sam Pearson (The Citadel), Sterling Martin (Davidson), Vicki Hightower (Elon), Dan and Kat Joyner (Furman), Tim Durden (Georgia Southern), Dr. Richard A. Beavers (UNC Greensboro), James L. “Bucky” Wolford (Chattanooga), Ted Phillips, Jr. and Avis A. Phillips (Western Carolina) and Ed Wile (Wofford).
"The Distinguished Service Award honors select individuals who have gone above and beyond the call to help Southern Conference institutions better achieve their goals to the benefit of thousands of student-athletes,” said Southern Conference Commissioner John Iamarino. “We sincerely appreciate their efforts and are happy to recognize the award recipients with this honor."
Sofield is a 1976 graduate of Appalachian State and a former football player for the Mountaineers. Currently the owner of U.S. Buildings and U.S. Chemicals, both of which are based in Boone, Sofield has been an active part of the ASU athletics family for decades. He is a member of the Chancellor’s Society and helped found the Former Athletes Association at Appalachian. In addition, Sofield presently serves on the Athletics Enhancement Campaign Committee. The recently-completed Sofield Family Indoor Practice Facility is the result of his family’s lead gift to the campaign. Sofield and his family also serve on numerous boards and commissions which enhance their local community.
The Masters were both born and raised in Charleston, and their respective families have called the Lowcountry home for generations. Cindy and Ernie attended Cougar athletics events starting at an early age, and Ernie is believed to be the only person to have ever played basketball for College of Charleston, The Citadel and Charleston Southern. He is President and CEO of The Masters Company, a full service real estate company specializing in commercial sales, residential sales, leasing and development. She recently retired from teaching at the Charleston Day School in order to spend more time with their grandchildren. The Masters have supported Cougar Athletics in a multitude of ways throughout the years and are currently one of the Cougars’ top individual donors. They made significant contributions to the new Arena Project and the student section in the new facility will bear their name. One of the Masters’ businesses, Jim 'N Nick's Restaurant, is one of Cougar Athletics most prominent corporate sponsors. Ernie and Cindy have each served on the Cougar Club Board of Directors and Ernie served on the Athletic Center Initiative Executive Committee.
Pearson, a member of The Citadel Class of 1955, served in the Regimental Band as Drum Major in the 125-member band while a student. He graduated from medical school in Missouri and spent eight years in family practice in Arlington, Texas. He is a retired diagnostic radiologist who now lives in Fort Worth, and he recently established a trust endowment for the stadium project in the amount of $2.25 million. The trust was divided into two endowments with $1,125,000 going to academic scholarships and $1,125,000 allocated for athletic scholarships upon the retirement of all stadium debt.
Martin, Davidson ’63, was an employee at the college for 43 years, with duties including assistant and head track and cross-country coach, director of intramurals and physical education, coordinator of club sports, director of the Lake Campus, and interim director of athletics on three different occasions. Martin has served seven athletic directors, four presidents, and two interim presidents. In addition to their service on the Davidson campus, Martin and his wife Mary have also been tremendously active in the community, working on behalf of Davidson College Presbyterian Church and the Boy Scouts. Sterling chairs the town’s parks and recreation committee, and is also president of the Davidson Lands Conservancy
Vicki Hightower, a computer science professor at Elon for more than two decades, was named Faculty Athletics Representative in the fall of 1990. Her 18 years of service have been marked by dedication to the principle of student-athletes focusing on academics first and athletics second, as well as a deep love of sport. Over the course of her experience as a Faculty Athletics Representative, Hightower has been active in NCAA leadership. She has served on the NCAA Initial Eligibility Waivers Committee at both the Division I and Division II levels. She has been an active member of the Southern Conference softball and baseball committees in addition to serving on the Southern Conference Constitution and Bylaws Revision Committee and the Resolutions Committee. Hightower has been an active member of the Faculty Athletics Representative Association (FARA). She served as the Secretary/Treasurer of FARA from 2003 until 2007. She also developed and maintained the FARA website until this past year.
Dan and Kat Joyner’s love for Furman University has been evident for many years. Dan earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Furman, where he served as president of the student body and was voted “Student of the Year.” He now sits on the Furman Board of Trustees and is also a member of the Athletic Hall of Fame. Together they have become one of the greatest Furman families and most ardent academic and athletic benefactors. Rarely is there a Furman event where they are not present. While Kat engages in many philanthropic Greenville functions and runs their large extended family, Dan concentrates on overseeing the Prudential C. Dan Joyner Company, which he founded shortly after graduating in 1959. He was awarded South Carolina’s highest honor, the Order of the Palmetto, by the governor in 1998. He has been honored twice as Greenville’s Realtor of the Year as well as South Carolina’s Realtor of the Year, and in 2002 he was selected as National Prudential Broker of the Year and named to the Prudential Hall of Fame. Joyner has been named by The Greenville News as one of the top 25 most influential people in the Upstate.
Durden arrived at Georgia Southern in the fall of 1984 as a member of the Eagles’ fledgling football program, and for the past two-and-a-half decades, he has been a loyal and valued member of the GSU family. Durden was recognized as the “Young Alumnus of the Year” by the Georgia Southern University Alumni Association in 1998, and he has annually served as a volunteer for the Southern community fundraising effort. He has also served as a member of the Executive Board of the Southern Boosters and, most recently, the past President of the Eagle Football Assistance Association. A contractor by trade, Durden has lent his talents on numerous occasions by rebuilding the footbridge across Eagle Creek and by annually remodeling and updating all of the suites at Paulson Stadium and Clements Stadium free of charge.
Beavers has been a member of UNC Greensboro’s Spartan Club since 1986. He has served on the Spartan Executive Committee since 1994 and was named Chair in 2004-05 and 2005-06. He and his wife, Shari, established an annual athletics scholarship for men’s basketball and have also created a scholarship endowment for men’s basketball. Beavers also established an athletics endowment at Wake Forest University. He has been the most active and successful chair of the Spartan Club since its inception, helping launch the 2004 UNCG Student First Campaign for the Spartan Club. He has been instrumental in asking other individuals to join this effort. He and Shari have hosted numerous fund-raising events at their home, and he has been involved on the Guilford County Dental Society as Past President, the North Carolina Dental Society, the Guilford Rotary Club and the North Carolina Endodontics Association, serving as President in 1998. He was the recipient of the North Carolina Dental Society Citizenship Award in 2001 and was made a Fellow of the Academy of Dentistry International in 2001. Dr. Beavers is in partnership in the endodontics practice of Beavers & Keating, DDS, PA.
Wolford, a retail developer with three decades of experience, in 1999 formed Wolford Development, Inc., a retail shopping center company headquartered in Chattanooga. Wolford's commitment to Chattanooga Athletics has been unwavering since his graduation from the University in the summer of 1969. A longtime member of the UTC Blue & Gold Club, Wolford has lent both his influence and affluence to countless projects, campaigns and been a key driver behind much of Chattanooga's success both on the playing surfaces and in the community. His most recent significant support for UTC comes in the form of the Wolford Family Strength & Conditioning Center, a key component of the Brenda Lawson Student-Athlete Success Center, for which ground was broken in December 2007. The $3.25 million facility ensures UTC's commitment to student-athlete welfare and signals a major vote of Wolford's confidence in the vision and direction of the University's commitment to comprehensive athletic excellence. He was co-captain of the UTC football team and third team Little All-American. Wolford was named to the UTC Athletics Hall of Fame in 1989 and was a 2004 inductee to the University's Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. He currently serves as a member of the UTC Athletic Board, a board member of the University of Chattanooga Foundation and the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees.
Avis A. Phillips and her son, William Ted Phillips, Jr., are longtime supporters of Western Carolina and the Catamounts’ athletic programs. Ted is a WCU graduate who was a member of the football team from 1978-1980. He is a member of the Western Carolina University Board of Trustees while Avis is a former member of the same group. Ted is the Chairman and President of Buffalo Construction Co. and President of the Wellington Development Company. Avis is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Avisco, Inc., a general and specialty contractor based in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Together, the two founded a major endowment at WCU that supports football student-athletes who major in the area of construction management.
Wile, a former letterman in football and baseball at Wofford, helped organize the Terrier Club’s Atlanta Area Mini-Tour Golf Tournament. For the past 14 years, his year-round work developing sponsorships and support for the tournament has paid scholarship dividends for Wofford student-athletes. He now serves on the college’s Board of Trustees and is co-chairing an ambitious campaign to endow the college’s athletic program ? a campaign that Wile sees as not just doable, but essential. Wile and his wife, Vickey, made a lead gift of $250,000 to Wofford’s athletic endowment in 2005 with the establishment of the Vera Davis Parsons Endowed Scholarship Fund, in honor of Wile’s benefactor during his years at Wofford. The gift triggered a $250,000 match from the estate of Mrs. Homozel Mickel Daniel and the creation of a second endowed athletic scholarship. Wile is an advisory and brokerage services PRIME Consultant with UBS Financial Services, Inc., in Atlanta, Ga.