Baseball Rams Maybin, Coach Smith Join WNC Sports Hall of Fame - TribPapers
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Baseball Rams Maybin, Coach Smith Join WNC Sports Hall of Fame

Three generations of Maybin men are, L-R: Trent and Max, their father Cameron, and Cam’s father Rudy. Photo by Pete Zamplas.

Asheville – It’s beginning to look a lot like a T.C. Roberson baseball Christmas, with honoring of those two men very instrumental in Ram baseball championship success. Timing is perfect. The Rams won 4A state titles in 2023 and ‘24, and return most stars for a superb chance to “three-peat” and make 2025 another Year of the Ram.

Roberson has six state titles overall, with five in this Millennium including three since 2017 under current head coach Eric Filipek. Before Filipek’s reign, T.C. seemingly stood for “Tom’s Champions.” Tom Smith coached the Rams to their first three state titles. They were in 1983 with pitcher Darren Holmes, 2000 with pitcher Chris Narveson, and 2002 with then-freshman Cameron Keith Maybin and other stars. All three won World Series rings.

Filipek led the Rams to their three latest crowns — in 2017, 2023, and in June. Filipek and assistants rooted on Smith and Maybin acceptance speeches in the Omni Grove Park Inn on Dec. 8.

Filipek told the Tribune that by March, TCR’s hurricane-destroyed batting cages will be replaced and a new 40×80 foot indoor facility with batting and pitching cages will open. Its $250,000 cost is reduced by donated labor, he noted.

Arledge, Johnson

Smith and Maybin make up half of the 2024 WNC Sports Hall of Fame. They were inducted with Enka High and Western Carolina University great Jayne Arledge and Avery County High alumnus Paul Johnson.

Arledge has remained WCU Lady Catamount basketball’s all-time scorer since in 1979. She averaged 19.5 points. She is the sole female athlete whose number (25) WCU retired. She got WCU’s first women’s basketball scholarship. She credits the Title IX federal civil rights law of 1972, when she was a ninth-grader.

Johnson was the three-time ACC football coach of the year. In 2007, he led Georgia Tech to its first win over Notre Dame in 43 years. Asheville Cougar coaching legend Danny Wilkins introduced him. He praised how Johnson shunned strategic “cheat sheets” during games, and instead “counterpunched with the best.”

Johnson quipped to the crowd that he felt too old to coach when, on recruiting visits to families, “the grandmas start looking good” to him.

The non-profit Mountain Athletic Amateur Club also presented longtime Asheville Citizen-Times sports editor Larry Pope with a lifetime award.

T.C.: Tom’s Champions

N.C. Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame member Tom Smith and Maybin are in the Ram Ring of Gold. Ironically, WCU alumnus Smith is a Hall of Famer of TCR’s arch-rival A.C. Reynolds (Class of ‘72).

Smith managed the Rams to state playoffs in 19 of 28 seasons. He won 14 conference titles, and is an 11-time league coach of the year. He was 478-183 (.723), starting in 1979. He is an 11-time coach of the year. He led UNC-Asheville baseball for five years, starting in 2010. 

Smith proudly proclaims that Roberson has won more baseball games and playoff contests than any NCHSAA baseball program since 1979. Five of his players were state players of the year. In all, 83 played collegiate baseball. Narveson was a second-round pick. He won more MLB games than any WNC native.

Smith surprised Maybin when seeing the Astros at the Texas Rangers. Maybin “saw me and lit up. He jumped into the stands,” Smith recalled.

World Champ Cam

Cam Maybin is WNC’s highest-drafted ballplayer ever, as a top-ten pick in 2005. He was the Baseball America national Youth Player of the Year in 2004, and on the 2005 All-USA Today National Baseball Team. 

He won a World Series ring in 2017 with the Houston Astros, over the Dodgers. Maybin told the Tribune back then that it felt “exciting” and “humbling” to finally become a world champion. He was a reserve outfielder and pinch runner. His most pivotal hit in was in game two. He singled pinch-hitting, stole second base, and scored the go-ahead run in the Astros’ crucial 7-6 victory to even the series. His stolen base earned people a free Taco Bell taco.

Maybin batted .254 over 15 MLB seasons through 2021, with 187 stolen bases including 40 in 2011. Maybin batted .315 for Detroit in 2016. He debuted in August, 2007 and smacked a “bomb” (homer) off of star Roger Clemens.

Since retiring, Maybin has been a television color commentator and summer league manager. Cam’s eldest son Trent, an Asheville Cougar junior star centerfielder, said that Texas offered him a “full ride” in baseball. Trent’s brother Max is in sixth grade. Max said that he plans to attend Reynolds, spreading Maybin talent around Asheville.

Cam and Courtney’s Maybin Mission started in 2016. It provided Christmas meals and gifts pre-COVID, and is aiding the needy in Old Fort for this Christmas.