JACKSONVILLE— Two outstanding individuals will be inducted into the Jacksonville-Onslow Sports Commission Hall of Fame on Saturday at the Jacksonville Country Club, according to the Jacksonville Daily News.
Former Lejeune High School and Northside-Jacksonville High School athletic director Mike Smith and former White Oak standout athlete and major league baseball player Chad Fonville will join the Hall of Fame.
Smith continues to assist at Northside in his retirement. He is a graduate of Lejeune High who attended Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., before joining the Marine Corps in 1965. He was wounded in Vietnam and discharged after four years of service, and then spent his entire professional career after that assisting young people.
In all, Smith worked at Lejeune for 33 years and then became the first athletic director when Northside opened in 2001, serving in that capacity for eight years. He was also very active in the North Carolina Athletic Directors Assocaition.
Fonville was a great athlete at White Oak who attended Louisburg College. He saw time in the major leagues with the Montreal Expos, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox after being drafted in the 11th round of the major league baseball draft by San Francisco.
He played 88 games for the Dodgers in 1995 and appeared in 103 contests for the Dodgers the following year. He had a career MLB batting average of .244, according to Baseball Almanac.
