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Herb Appenzeller will take his place among the sports legends of this state tonight, continuing a long line of unlikely Guilford College legends in the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

And his induction will be as unlikely as any.

Like those before him, many of whom he has known and worked alongside, the former Guilford educator and athletics director said he's been humbled by it. He's also amazed that a career that began in tragedy will be recognized along with the rest of the old Quakers, a school that all but eliminated sports about the time he got to Guilford.

"You can hardly believe it," the 84-year-old Appenzeller said from his home in Summerfield. "I'll probably be the oldest one to come in, certainly the oldest in this group."

He is one of seven inductees in the 2010 class, a group that includes Jim Donnan, the tennis phenom from Burlington who played quarterback at N.C. State and later became one of the top coaches in the country; Mike Quick, a Wolfpack wide receiver who played in the NFL; Carla Overbeck, who played on four NCAA soccer championship teams at UNC before becoming the longtime captain of the U.S. national team; Don McCauley, a two-time ACC player of the year at Carolina and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame; Karen Shelton, the legendary field hockey coach at UNC whose teams have won six national titles and 16 conference championships in 27 seasons; and Paul Simson, one of the country's most decorated amateur golfers who won two North and South Amateurs and two British Amateur titles.

Appenzeller's unlikely career began in a blinding moment in the days when football was even more messed up than it is today. His high school team in New Jersey was still playing in leather helmets when it went up against one of the first schools in the country to play in the new plastic helmets.

"A young man was hurt bad and a few days later he died," Appenzeller said. "I knew then what I wanted to do, and here I am 69 years later still doing it."

He decided to make the prevention of sports injuries and the managing of their aftermath his life's work. Appenzeller wrote the seminal book "From the Gym to the Jury" in 1970 and has since written and edited 21 books, 13 in the field of sports law.

Now he travels the country, still ambling about on a walker, studying and reviewing facilities at colleges, finding trouble where he can and trying to help athletes before they get injured and the schools before they get sued.

"We've probably been to more than 100 colleges and universities spreading the word," he said. "We've seen everything. Some of them listen to what we have to say. Most of them do. And you do feel good when people listen. You don't know how many deaths or injuries we're prevented. There's no way of knowing."

There's no one else who does what he does, and all of sports owes him a debt of gratitude. From pointing out unanchored soccer goals to providing information for schools being taken to court, Appenzeller has become a champion for young athletes who don't even know they're in danger while also becoming the nation's leading authority on injury liability and sports litigation.

He has seen sports from a unique angle for 69 years, from the moment he watched a fellow competitor go down and never get up until now, still inspired by that single tragedy all those years ago. And the irony is, he believes sports faced the exact problems then as it does now. Concussions, equipment and facility shortcomings, the pressure to win, the money involved.

"Just like 1925," he said. "The pressure to win is greater now, but that's about it. And the money is hard to believe. But the things that were going on in 1925 are going on now."

His career has become a personal quest to educate. And it has been a remarkable journey. Appenzeller did most of it right here at Guilford, where he was the athletics director for 31 years, looking out over a sporting landscape that must have looked hopelessly corrupt compared to the humble programs he ran at Guilford.

While television and bowls and tournaments swallowed up the innocence of sports over time, his program would produce champions and teachers and titles and hall of fame people, many of whom preceded him into our state's hall of fame.

"Tom Zachary, Ernie Shore, Rick Ferrell, Bob Jamieson, Jack Jensen, Jerry Steele, Dave Odom..."

He recited a list of old Quakers already in the hall and thought back to his earliest days at Guilford.

"They were going to do away with sports," Appenzeller said. "People don't know that, but the media release had already been written. We were going to do away with athletics. It was the early '60s. I'd just gotten there, and it looked like it was all going to end before it ever got started. We were 30 minutes away from announcing it."

An old physics professor changed the minds of the administrators and halted the announcement. A young professor with a unique dream might have had something to do with it, too, but he's too humble to talk about it all these years later.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com