The Lincoln Charter School athletic department has announced its second Hall of Fame class, which will be inducted on Thursday, May 19th, in a ceremony at the school’s Denver campus. The new inductees include four former star student-athletes, four coaches or administrators and four state championship-winning teams.
At the May 19 ceremony, a special permanent tribute to the late Lincoln Charter coach and teacher Jamie Seitz will also be unveiled. Seitz, who died of COVID-19 in December 2020, will also be one of the inductees into the 2022 LCS Hall of Fame Class.
The first LCS Hall of Fame class was honored in 2019.
The LCS Hall of Fame Class of 2022
Athletes:
Alexandria Baker: Baker was both a star swimmer and a standout soccer player for the Eagles, winning three individual state championships in swimming and making all-conference in soccer twice. In college, she continued her career at Queens, where she was a part of multiple NCAA championship teams, she won multiple national individual and relay championships, and was a Division II All-American.
Jackson Gabriel: A sharpshooting guard, Gabriel finished his career at the school with more successful three-pointers than any player in N.C. high school history at any level (486 made 3s). He scored 1946 points in his high school career, second to Kody Shubert. Gabriel continued playing basketball in college, at Lees-McRae and Milligan (Tenn.).
Emily Kenley: A standout softball pitcher, Kenley threw 23 shutouts at LCS, along with two no-hitters and one perfect game. A strong batter as well, she finished her high school career with a batting average of .359 and seven home runs. Kenley pitched collegiately at Lenoir-Rhyne, winning 40 games, and has continued to coach at the school.
Kody Shubert: Lincoln Charter's all-time leading scorer on the basketball court netted a total of 2476 points in his career. A 5-foot-10 point guard with explosive jumping ability, Shubert led the team to the 2017 men's 1A state championship and was an all-region player for all four years. Shubert later played college basketball at Presbyterian and North Georgia.
Coaches and Administrators:
Lori Ann Fortkort: As a swimming and diving coach in both high school and middle school, Fortkort was essential to the school’s ascension in the sport and put in untold hours behind the scenes. Fortkort pioneered the school’s diving team, which quickly became one of the reasons for the program’s statewide powerhouse status at the 1A and 2A levels.
Brad Gabriel: As the head men’s basketball coach at Lincoln Charter from 2013-21, Gabriel accumulated a 197-40 record. His teams won seven conference championships and made the state 1A finals twice, in 2017 and 2021. LCS won the 1A N.C. state title in 2017 at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill for the school’s first team state championship.
Daniel Schmitz: As Lincoln Charter’s athletic director for more than a decade, Schmitz shepherded a period of unprecedented sports achievement for LCS that included numerous state titles and facility upgrades. The school won the Wells Fargo Cup, symbolic of overall sports excellence, in both 2018 and 2020 in the 1A classification under Schmitz’s leadership.
Jamie Seitz: The basketball and golf coach was also a beloved elementary physical education (PE) school teacher at Lincoln Charter from 2009-2020. Seitz was the head coach of the LCS men’s golf team that won the 1A state championship, in 2017, and he was also an assistant coach on the 2017 men’s basketball state championship team. At age 51, Seitz died of COVID-19 in December 2020.
Teams:
Men's Cross Country (2018, 2019, 2020): The cross-country team’s unique “three-peat” as state champions was accomplished in dominant fashion. Because many of the runners participated on 2-3 of the state championship teams, the three squads will be honored together. The men’s teams won their trio of consecutive 1A state titles by an average of 44 points.
Jackson Law & Parker Powell: The two winningest tennis players in the school’s history, Powell and Law combined for a state 1A doubles title in 2018 with a three-set win in the final over Voyager Academy. As four-year starters for the Eagles at No. 1 and No. 2, they led the LCS tennis teams that made the 1A Final Four in dual competition three times from 2016-19.