Cozart, Parks among Guilford HOF selections
May 26—GUILFORD COUNTY — Andrea Cozart, who started the girls sports program at High Point Central, and longtime Southern Guilford coach and Thomasville native Sharon Parks are among this year's selections to the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame.
It is the third Hall of Fame selection for Cozart, who is a member of the High Point Central Athletics Hall of Fame and N.C. High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
A native of Bailey in Nash County, she played on a basketball team that won 100 consecutive games and graduated from East Carolina University in 1965.
Cozart helped establish the Girls' Athletic Association during her early days at Central, then went on to a stellar 30-year coaching career 1967-97. Her greatest accomplishments as a coach came in swimming. During her 10 years as head coach 1987-97, her women's teams posted a 92-5 dual meet record with 45 consecutive wins. Her men's teams were 91-6 with 47 consecutive dual team wins. She coached 14 individual NCHSAA state champions and three teams were state runners-up. During her coaching career, her teams never had a losing record.
As a tennis coach, her teams won 15 conference championships, an NCSHAA state championship in 1976, and produced five individual state champions. Cozart coached women's basketball on an "interim" basis 1983-86, posting a 67-3 record and a state runner-up finish in 1985, and was named conference coach of the year three times.
Sharon Parks, a 1979 graduate of Thomasville High and 1983 graduate of Guilford College, enjoyed a multi-sport high school coaching career from 1985 to 2018 that took her from Thomasville to Southern Guilford and Northern Guilford.
She was most accomplished coaching volleyball. posting an overall 584-198 record in volleyball during her career at three schools, winning 15 conference titles and being named Coach of the Year on 13 occasions. She coached one season at Thomasville, 21 at Southern and 11 at Northern after starting the program.
Parks also coached basketball at Thomasville Middle School and Southern Guilford, where her team won a regular season conference championship. She coached the track and softball teams at Southern Guilford, then started the softball program at Northern Guilford.
She was awarded the NCHSAA Award of Merit in 2008. While a student at Guilford College, Parks was a fine athlete. She was a four-year basketball and volleyball starter, earning All-conference honors in both sports as well as Academic All-American honors in 1983 in basketball. She was inducted into the Guilford College Hall of Fame in 1996.
The other selections included soccer standout David Blum. Page and N.C. State football standout Michael Brooks, longtime Greensboro Day soccer coach Kim Burroughs, North Carolina A&T trainer Thomas Bynum, Grimsley and UNC football standout Rod Elkins, longtime Western Guilford track coach DePaul Mittman (who started his career as football coach at Ferndale from 1979-1984), Northwest Guilford multi-sport star Renee Coltrane Pakkala, who was an All-American basketball player at UNC Greensboro, golfer Jason Widener and Thomas Alston, who in 1954 was the first Black to play for the St. Louis Cardinals.
