A local high school head coach and trainer won statewide awards from the North Carolina High School Athletic Association earlier this month. Joan Mabe, cross country and track coach at Chapel Hill High School, won the NCHSAA’s Doris Howard Female Coach of the Year award, and Emily Gaddy of Orange High School won the Elton Hawley Athletic Trainer of the Year honor.

Mabe is a UNC alumna, earning All-America honors in cross country and indoor and outdoor track with the Tar Heels. Mabe also participated in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, competing in the 10,000 meter run. She later coached men and women in Chapel Hill before moving on to Chapel Hill High, where she coaches men’s and women’s cross country and track. Mabe’s teams have won seven state championships since she took over as head coach.

Gaddy arrived at Orange High in 2012, serving as both an athletic trainer and teacher of sports medicine classes. She serves on the NCHSAA’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee, and has also served as chair of the NC Athletic Trainers’ Association’s Practice Settings Committee and Secondary Schools Committee.

“I have the honor and privilege of working day in and day out with my patients,” Gaddy said on her staff page on the Orange High School website. “I get to watch them meet their goals, make improvements, and work their hardest to get stronger and heal. I get to be on the sidelines when they return to the sport they love, graduate, or return home from two months in the hospital. I get to be there for them in their worst moments and in their best.”

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