The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1153250
SEPTEMBER 2019 ■ 35 plished split end made his way to NC State many years ago, and not too far from where another famous Wolfpack wide receiver got his start. The former was Elijah Marshall, who caught most of the rare passes thrown in of- fensive coordinator Bo Rein's split veer at- tack during the Lou Holtz's days as a head coach. In his four-year career from 1974- 77, the Gibsonville High School product caught 65 passes for 1,196 yards and five touchdowns. The latter was Torry Holt, the first foot- ball player ever recruited from Eastern Guilford High School to NC State. The fu- ture All-American wide receiver and NFL superstar still owns most of NC State's re- ceiving records, with 191 catches for 3,379 yards and 31 touchdowns, all of which he will take with him when he is inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame later this year. For Morehead, this little part of the state is where he used to work the cash register and drive-through window at the local Mc- Donald's, telling teammates and classmates no when they asked him to slip them an extra order of fries or whatever was left over at the end of his night shift. It's the place where he truly learned teamwork and commitment. And he did it in the rebuilt hallways and replanted playing fields of Eastern Guil- ford. Up From the Ashes The high school Morehead attended now has about 1,200 students, a total that in- creased sizably when Lenovo opened its manufacturing plant there in 2012. The school originally opened in 1974, drawing students from Gibsonville, McLeansville, Sedalia and other areas in that part of Guil- ford County. It is hardly one of the county's larger schools, such as High Point Andrews or Greensboro Page, which sent superstars like running back Ted Brown and wide receiver Haywood Jeffires, respectively, to NC State in the 1970s and '80s. It's not even as big as the county's other directional schools that have produced their fair share of recruited football players. Eastern Guilford isn't a school that pro- duces more than a dozen Division I ath- letes in a decade. It has, however, produced some important ones. Morehead learned when he got to NC State that one of the first faculty members hired at the high school when it first opened was an English teacher and girls basket- ball coach straight from Elon College. Her name was Debbie Yow, the younger sister of Gibsonville's Kay Yow, who was hired by NC State athletics director Willis Casey in 1974 as the first full-time women's coach at any college in North Carolina. Debbie made her contributions to Kay's program, sending forward Ronnie Laughlin from EGHS to play for the Wolfpack in 1976. Laughlin finished her career in 1980 with more than 1,200 points and helped the elder Yow win both the 1980 ACC regular- season and tournament championships. Debbie Yow also coached Teresa Holt, whose nephews Torry and Terrence became Wolfpack football legends. The connections Morehead's community has to State go back generations. And it was that community that needed help in the fall of 2006, when a fire that was started in a chemistry lab burned East- ern Guilford High to the ground. Most of the trophies and athletics memo- rabilia were saved, and no one was hurt in the fire, but the community was devastated, especially when investigators announced that the fire was deliberately set. No arrest has ever been made in the suspected arson. Faculty and staff scrambled to find tem- porary classrooms until a new version of EGHS could be built. Juniors and seniors went to Guilford Technical Community College, freshmen and sophomores went to the vacant Central North Carolina School for the Deaf. "It's amazing what tragedy does to bring people together," said EGHS athletics di- Torry Holt (above) — the first football player ever recruited from Eastern Guilford to NC State, who went on to earn All-America accolades and NFL stardom — and his brother Terrence have pro- vided guidance to Morehead since getting to know him at their football camps in their hometown. PHOTO COURTESY RAMS