HS notebook: Cox Mill High names Grayson Butler as its new baseball coach

Grayson Butler is the new baseball coach at Cox Mill High School in Concord.

For the past four seasons, Butler has been the school’s junior varsity coach as well as varsity assistant and pitching coach. In that span, Miller helped Cox Mill win a regional championship in 2021 and play in the N.C. 3A state championship series.

As pitching coach, Butler helped develop Marty Gair into a 2023 Philadelphia Phillies’ 13th round pick as well as send than a dozen players onto the college level.

In the summer, Butler is coach of the Lake Norman Copperheads of the Southern Collegiate Baseball League

In high school, Butler played at Hough in Cornelius before continuing his career at Division II Anderson University. He later graduated from Charlotte.

Area athletes attend Flight Academy

▪ Several area student-athletes recently participated in the AFJROTC Flight Academy, among 200 cadets selected across the country to spend eight weeks at an accredited university with an opportunity to earn a pilot’s licenese.

Robinson’s Haven Monroe and Sara Hinson, who played volleyball, were at Purdue, along with Independence girls basketball player Lily Todd — The Observer’s girls student-athlete of the 2022-23 school year — and East Mecklenburg’s Skylar Kupfer.

Track stars, ‘Olympic hopefuls,’ give back at JCSU

Garinger High boys’ and girls’ track coach Tan Filmore-Scott said she’s so proud of recent US Olympic track star Anna Cockrell, who won multiple state titles at Charlotte’s Providence Day School. Cockrell recently qualified for this year’s Team USA World Championship team in the 400-meter hurdles.

And Filmore-Scott really believes that the United States may have some other local talent, like Cockrell, on future national teams.

Last week, Filmore-Scott helped bring together four area talents to help with a youth camp at Johnson C. Smith.

Former high school stars Sanu Jallow (West Meck), Kaylynn Brown (Mallard Creek), Akayla Garrett (Harding/Albemarle) and Cheyla Scott (Butler) all showed up to teach the youngsters about their sport. Several boys high school stars also showed up, including Mallard Creek’s newly crowned state championship relay team.

“It was like track 101 for the kids,” Filmore-Scott said. “It was really nice and (JC Smith athletic director Steve) Joyner said, ‘We’ve done this for eight years and never seen it like that’. It was just a special group of girls and people.”

Filmore-Scott believes that all four girls in attendance at JC Smith last week could become future Olympians, like Cockrell.

▪ Jallow, for example, graduated West Mecklenburg in 2022. At Texas A&M, She had a top 10 finish as a freshman at the SEC Outdoor championships in the 800 and ran on a 1,600-relay team that finished second at NCAA Nationals. A native of Gambia, she’s a top-ranked runner in her country and could qualify there.

▪ Brown, who will be a freshman at Arkansas, is already a U20 All-American in the 100- and 200-meters and she’s a U20 World Champion in the 1,600 mixed relay. She also finished third in the 400 in the US Track and Field U20 Outdoor Championship in 2022.

▪ Garrett, heading to Texas, won multiple high school state championships this spring. She is a two-time World U20 400-meter hurdles champion.

▪ Scott, 17, has already hit a U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying mark in the high jump at 6-2.25. Scott started school at Tennessee in January and broke the school’s outdoor high jump record at the SEC Championship, where she finished third. Scott ranks No. 1 in the woirld among U20 high jumpers currently.

AL Brown names new girls basketball coach

Kayla Crayton, 28, is the new girls basketball coach at AL Brown.

Crayton is an AL Brown graduate who has been a special education teacher at Kannapolis Middle School. At Brown, she’ll replace Davon Brown, whose team was 9-15 last season. She has been the school’s assistant volleyball coach for six seasons.

Brown has not had a winning season since 14-9 under Mike Wolford in the 2014-15 season. That was two years after Crayton graduated in 2013.

CMS to host parents symposium Thursday

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools athletics department will host its first parent athletic symposium Thursday at 7 p.m. at Rocky River High School.

CMS officials will have information for parents about NCAA college scholarship and admission requirements as well as information about current NC High School Athletic Association rules. CMS staff from several departments will also be on hand to provide information. The event will be in the Rocky River auditorium and is free. Parents will admitted until all seats are filled.