Jeff Lewis

Year Inducted: 2025

Jeff Lewis was a standout athlete at both Unity High School and South Iredell High School and was a true civil rights trailblazer before a distinguished 30-year teaching and coaching career.

Lewis was a basketball and baseball standout at Unity High School during the era of segregation. Unity did not have a football team so in 1967 Lewis enrolled at South Iredell two years before desegregation was mandatory. He became South’s first African-American student and athlete.

Lewis received 10 varsity letters in high school, lettering in both basketball and baseball two seasons each while at Unity. At South Iredell, Lewis lettered in football, basketball and baseball his junior and senior years.

He went to Winston-Salem State University on a football and baseball scholarship. Lewis was an All-Conference wide receiver his junior and senior season in 1971 and 1972. He was named to the Small College All-American Second Team in 1971. Lewis was the leading receiver on the 1972 team which was inducted into the Winston-Salem State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014.
Lewis taught school and coached for 32 years before retiring, and 30 of those were in Iredell County. The first two years were in Virginia before he returned to Iredell County.

As was the pattern in those years, he coached the entire school year, three sports, including as an assistant coach on the football team. He was best known as the boy’s basketball coach and head baseball coach at West Iredell High School where he instilled the character traits we all want to see in student-athletes at any level, not just high school.

An avid fisherman, Lewis competes in professional bass fishing competitions.