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.
            Melanie Stewart of North Moore High School and Bradley Schmidt of Hendersonville 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 7.
           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.
            Schmidt has played football, basketball and baseball all four years during his high school career, lettering in all three sports and serving as team captain of all three Bearcat varsity teams. He has also earned postseason honors, all-conference or all-area, in all three sports.
            A straight A student who is ranked second in his senior class, Schmidt is president of the Key Club and also president of the National Honor Society and a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He plans to attend the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and major in biomedical engineering.
            Stewart is a four-year varsity tennis player at North Moore and also helped her school organize a swim team on which she competes. She led her tennis team in victories last year.
            A member of the band at North Moore—and that includes the marching, pep, jazz and concert bands—Stewart attended the North Carolina Governor’s School in instrumental music last summer.  She is a member of the Key Club and also had had major roles in a number of school plays.
            Stewart will enroll at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall and plans to major in biomedical engineering.
            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. Melanie and Bradley are outstanding representatives of the attributes that Pat embodied and emphasized.”