03/05/10 -   Ten athletes, coaches and other members of the Royals Athletics family were honored recently when Queens University of Charlotte inducted the first class into the new Hall of Fame.

Five former student athletes, three administrators and two lifetime achievement award recipients were chosen to receive the honor.  This first class was actually interconnected not only from their time at Queens, but even before setting foot on campus.

Student athlete inductees were Walter Aikens, Bill Kennedy, Suzy Sulsona, Sequoya Friday and Kevin Yearick. Three of the five were soccer players and the other two basketball players.  The Royals Lifetime Achievement Award recipients were Christine Safford Beck and Jane Mack.  Dale Layer, Phyllis Pharr, and the late Billy O. Wireman were the first honorees in the coach or administrator category.

Three of the inductees, Layer, Sulsona and Kennedy, all hailed from Gainesville, Fla.  Sulsona and Layer both attended Buchholz High School.

Of the five inductees, three all had the same coach at Queens. Kennedy, Yearick and Sulsona are products of men's soccer coach Fred Norchi.  He is the current men's soccer head coach, and started and led the women's soccer program while also coaching the men's team while they were at Queens.

During the ceremony, Katie Wireman, the widow of former Queens President Billy O. Wireman, presented Director of Athletics Jeannie King with his men's basketball Elite Eight appearance ring.  The ring marks the first-ever appearance of a Queens team in the quarter-finals of an NCAA championship.

The emotionally charged ceremony, which was on Feb. 20, was held at the new Queens Sports Complex on Tyvola Road. 

Queens University of Charlotte is a private, co-ed, Presbyterian-affiliated comprehensive university with a commitment to both liberal arts and professional studies. Located in the heart of historic Charlotte, Queens serves approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students through its College of Arts and Sciences, the McColl School of Business, the Presbyterian School of Nursing, the Wayland H. Cato, Jr. School of Education, the School of Communication and Hayworth College for Adult Studies.