The Fayetteville Sports Club is honored to announce the 2025 class of its Hall of Fame.

This year’s induction ceremony will be held on April 17 at 6 p.m. at the Tony Rand Student Center on the campus of Fayetteville Technical Community College. 

Tickets are $65 and can be purchased by contacting Ashley Petroski at ashley@npfp.com or 910-323-9195.

Advance sales will end on April 10. Following are this year’s class members. Head and shoulders photos of each inductee will follow in a separate email. 

Dean Saffos

Saffos enjoyed a long and successful career as a head football coach that saw him make two stops in Fayetteville, once as head coach at E.E. Smith from 1984-89 and later at Pine Forest from 1998-2006.

He was a coach in Cumberland County during a golden era of local high school football that included contemporaries like fellow Hall of Famers Douglas Byrd’s Bob Paroli, South View’s Randy Ledford and Seventy-First’s Bobby Poss.

Saffos made other coaching stops in the eastern half of the state at Jacksonville, Wilmington Hoggard and East Columbus.

While on the staff with Ray Durham at Jacksonville in 1982 Saffos helped guide the Cardinals to a state championship.

He was recognized three times as the Coach of the Year in the old Mid-South 4-A Conference along with being named Southeastern Regional Coach of the Year and the state Coach of the Year by N.C. Preps.

He also won a distinguished service award from Mid-South Sports.

His teams made multiple deep advances into the N.C. High School Athletic Association playoffs and he averaged seven wins per season during his career.

Curtis Frye

Frye served as an assistant football coach on the staff of Douglas Byrd coach and fellow Hall of Famer Bob Paroli. He went on to be an assistant at East Carolina, Florida, N.C. State and North Carolina.

He carved out his greatest success during a lengthy and outstanding career as the head women’s track coach at the University of South Carolina.

He guided the Gamecocks to the school’s first NCAA title in any sport as his women’s track team won the 2002 national championship.

He has coached some of the finest track athletes in NCAA and Olympic history. The list of names includes another Hall of Famer, Demetria Washington of Terry Sanford.

Of the approximately 200 athletes he coached while at South Carolina, all but one earned a degree from the school.

Frye also founded the Frye Foundation to increase awareness of diabetes and deal with mental illness in the African-American community. His foundation hosts diabetes benefit runs and fundraisers for nursing scholarships.

Glenn Riddle

Riddle is thought to be the only Cumberland County native who officiated men’s basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

In 1983, he officiated games involving both the NCAA men’s and women’s national championship teams that season, North Carolina State and Old Dominion respectively.

In 1986 he was chosen to officiate the NCAA 1-AA football championship playoffs at the regional level.

He also officiated the N.C. Coaches Association East-West All-Star game in Greensboro as well as state championship football games for the N.C. High School Athletic Association at the 1-A, 2-A, 3-A and 4-A levels.

He officiated with such greats as Lou Bello and Lenny Wirtz. Among the coaches and athletes he called the games of were Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, David Thompson, Len Bias, Tommy Burleson, Jay Bilas, Clarence “Cornbread” Maxwell and Ralph Sampson.

He also officiated high school, college and American Legion baseball.

In addition, Riddle served as an assistant superintendent for both the Cumberland County and Lee County school systems. 

Bob McEvoy

McEvoy was a successful coach and athletic administrator.

He started out as the men’s basketball coach at Douglas Byrd High School where he took a program mired in losing and turned it into a state playoff qualifier.

Eventually he landed at then Methodist College as basketball coach where he served seven seasons. In 1996-97 Methodist was 22-8, setting a school record for wins, and advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight.

He was honored as National Association of Basketball Coaches South Region Coach of the Year. 

In addition he was twice named conference Coach of the Year.

He became the Methodist athletic director and held the position for 25 years. During his tenure Methodist teams earned 15 NCAA national titles and placed in the top five 15 other times.

Methodist won the President’s Cup for overall athletic excellence five times, including three in a row from 2013-2016.

Since 1998, Methodist has won 100 league titles, more than any other conference member.

McEvoy served on numerous NCAA committees overseeing various sports and was tournament director for a number of NCAA regional and national championships.

Bishop Harris

Harris, a product of E.E. Smith High School and N.C. Central University, had a lengthy career as a coach at the collegiate and professional level.

He coached for a few years at the local high school level before moving up the ladder.

Harris coached at Duke and N.C. State before becoming became the first black coach on the staff of Louisiana State when he was hired by Bo Rein in 1979. Harris coached with Rein at N.C. State.

After leaving LSU, Harris coached at Notre Dame and Minnesota, then served as head coach at his alma mater N.C. Central for two seasons.

After that he moved to the NFL for the rest of his coaching career.

Over the years he was on the staff of the Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, Buffalo Bills, New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers.

Among his best players were future Pro Football Hall of Famer Curtis Martin of the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers All-Pro Frank Gore.

A 1963 graduate of N.C. Central, Harris earned a master’s degree from Duke in 1972.

Earl Vaughan Jr. is a former CityView sports correspondent and longtime Fayetteville journalist. He is the current media contact for the Fayetteville Sports Club.