Throughout the course of the 2008-2009 academic year, we will seek to recognize some of the great names of the past to highlight the heritage of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association in honor of the Association’s 95th anniversary. In this edition we are pleased to recognize Richard “Bud” Phillips.

Bud Phillips, a 1949 graduate of Wake Forest, built an outstanding record in several sports at four different schools, most notably at J. H. Rose High School in Greenville. He served Rose in one capacity or another from 1957 to his retirement in 1990. During his career, he was a head coach in football, basketball, baseball, track, and wrestling as well as serving as athletic director. His 1961 Rose football team won the Eastern championship (there was no state title at that time) and he was head coach for the North Carolina team in the 1968 Shrine Bowl game. Notably, his basketball teams when he coached at Haw River often averaged close to 100 points a game– back in the early 1950’s.

Phillips was very active in state and national athletic director circles. He served as both president and later executive secretary of the North Carolina Athletic Directors Association, and represented that group on the NCHSAA Board of Directors. He received the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) State Award of Merit in 1988, the first year it was presented, and was on that national group’s Board of Directors as well.

He was the first prep athletic director in the state to earn athletic director certification through the NIAAA and was inducted into the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 1991.