Pancake, Fox Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame athletes of year

photo Brooke Pancake
photo Steven Fox celebrates winning a hole during the U.S. Amateur golf tournament at Cherry Hills, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012, in Cherry Hills Village, Colo.

Young golfers Brooke Pancake from Chattanooga and Steven Fox from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga were standouts on a national level in 2012, and the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame is honoring them as its athletes of the year.

The two will be among the honorees at the organization's annual banquet Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chattanooga Convention Center. Tickets are $35 and can be obtained by calling Hall president John Farr at 875-9282 by Feb. 15.

Also receiving special awards that night will be longtime Girls Preparatory School athletic director Peggy Michaels and Sale Creek High School athlete Rachel Price. Michaels will receive the Betty Probasco Award for lifetime service to athletics. Price will receive the Jim Morgan/Allan Morris Award for courage and perseverance.

Pancake received a plethora of awards in 2012 and also earned her LPGA Tour card, only the third woman from the Chattanooga area to do so. The former Baylor School four-time state champion was a first-team All-American at Alabama and led the Crimson Tide to the NCAA championship by making a four-foot putt on the closing hole. She was the individual runner-up.

She also won the Honda Sports Award for intercollegiate golf, is a three-time Academic All-American and was a member of the 2012 Curtis Cup team, featuring the best women amateurs in the United States. She was also the SEC women's athlete of the year and a finalist for NCAA women's athlete of the year.

Fox, a UTC senior from Hendersonville, won the most prestigious title in men's amateur golf in the summer, capturing the U.S. Amateur at the renowned Cherry Hills Golf Club at Denver. Fox won the title when he sank a birdie putt on the first extra hole of a sudden-death playoff.

Fox was the Tennessee Golf Association player of the year, made the NCAA East Region all-star team and shot a record 64 at Old Stone in Kentucky at the region tournament. A two-time All-Southern Conference player, he was chosen to represent the U.S. in two international events: the World Team Championship and the Copa de las Americas. The U.S. three-man team won the world title in Turkey.

Michaels has been the director of physical education for the last quarter of a century at GPS, where she developed an award-winning fitness program called SHAPE (Starting Habit to Attain Physical Excellence) and was a former Tennessee teacher of the year in physical education. She has taught P.E. in the Dalton, Ga., and Hamilton County public school systems. Michaels is a recipient of the Flavious Smith Distinguished Alumnus Award from Tennessee Tech. She has been widely acclaimed for her courage and inspiration related to multiple sclerosis, a disease she has battled for 25 years.

Price began playing varsity basketball at Sale Creek as an eighth-grader and has been playing AAU ball for five years. But she developed lymphoma last year, her junior season. She continued to play as long as her health allowed last year and was ecstatic when her doctor allowed her to play summer ball with her AAU team. She continues to play in this her senior season at Sale Creek. Price, because of her courage through the illness, is a representative of the Miracle Children's Network.

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