Cullowhee, N.C. – Three former Catamounts representing baseball, women's golf, and women's track & field, as well as honoring the professional achievement of a former athletic trainer, comprise the four-member Class of 2025 slated for induction into the Western Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame scheduled for November
Todd Raleigh (Player,1988-91; Coach, 1993-95 and 2000-07), a former Catamount baseball player and coach, women's track & field standout
Alisha Bradshaw (2012-15),
Ashley Hovda Kress (2002-06) from women's golf, and former athletic trainer
L. Ray "Slim" Davis (1980-84) will each be enshrined on Hall of Fame weekend, Nov. 14-15, 2025.
Raleigh is the 25th Catamount baseball player – and the fourth former WCU skipper – to be inducted into the WCU Athletics Hall of Fame. Bradshaw is just the fourth from the Catamount women's track & field team to receive the honor, while Kress, who was previously inducted as part of the 2002-03 women's golf team and enshrined back in 2014, is only the second women's golf individual player to be inducted all-time.
Davis earns an honorary induction for professional achievement, the first for WCU since Gerald Austin was honored back in 2021.
This year's Hall of Fame ceremony is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 14, in the third-floor Grand Room of the on-campus Hinds University Center. The evening event begins with a meet-and-greet social from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., followed by the ceremony at 7 p.m. All four honorees will be recognized at Saturday's Catamount football game against ETSU, with kickoff at Noon at E.J. Whitmire Stadium / Bob Waters Field.
Todd Raleigh was a two-time All-Southern Conference selection during his four-year playing career in Cullowhee from 1988 through 1991, collecting second-team plaudits in 1990 and first-team accolades in 1991 behind the plate. He went on to serve as an assistant coach for two seasons in the early 1990s before taking over as the ninth head coach in Catamount baseball history in 2000.
A two-time SoCon Coach of the Year (2002, 2007), Raleigh guided his alma mater to 257 victories, including a pair of regular-season crowns, a tournament championship, and two berths in the NCAA postseason, reaching the regional finals both times. His 257 victories and 132 SoCon wins rank him inside the Top 25 overall and Top 20 in SoCon tallies in league history. Raleigh's teams turned in five top-three league finishes, scoring 30 or more wins in six of his eight seasons at the helm, with 42 wins in 2007 and 43 victories in 2003 as both squads played in the NCAA postseason. His 2000 squad orchestrated one of the largest single-season turnarounds in league history (+15), while the 2006 club was the only team in the nation to record nonconference road wins over a pair of College World Series teams, winning at both Clemson and Georgia that season.
The 2003 Catamounts ranked 35th in the NCAA in winning percentage (0.672, 43-21), while finished 37th nationally in scoring at 7.5 runs per game (455 total), with 58 home runs (71st, 0.91 per game), and 148 doubles (18th, 2.31 per game), and had 97 stolen bases (58th in NCAA).
Raleigh guided WCU to the Chapel Hill regional final in 2007 after a regular-season Southern Conference championship. The Catamounts posted a winning record against teams in the top 35 of the RPI, and were awarded a rare mid-major at-large bid to the field of 64 for the 2007 NCAA postseason. Western Carolina, which worked itself into a top 40 national RPI slot, was touted by ESPN college baseball analyst Kyle Peterson as featuring an "SEC-style offense," finishing 11th in the nation with a .323 team batting average, with a program-record tying 148 doubles (7th in the NCAA), 12 triples, 87 home runs (6th in the NCAA), while scoring 520 runs to rank sixth in the NCAA on 725 total base hits. The 2007 team additionally ranked sixth nationally in slugging percentage (.517).
As a player, Raleigh led the Catamounts and the Southern Conference in RBI in 1991 with a program-record 78 runs driven in, a mark that continues to rank him third in WCU's all-time single-season record books. He also collected Player of the Week plaudits in '91 on his way to All-SoCon honors. Raleigh legged out a team-best four triples in 1990, tied for the most in the league that season. In a 1989 SoCon tournament game, Raleigh blasted a two-run home run in a 4-2 win over Marshall, adding to his plaudits by throwing out a runner at home plate from the outfield after being forced out from behind the plate by team injuries. He later earned SoCon All-Tournament team accolades in the 1991 postseason event.
Raleigh continues to rank in WCU's career record books with his 43 career doubles. Defensively, he ranks tied for 12th with a .984 career fielding percentage over 873 career chances (17th), with 746 career putouts, the 19th-most in program history.
Originally from Swanton, Vermont, Raleigh signed a professional free agent contract with his longtime favorite baseball franchise, the Boston Red Sox, in 1991, following his WCU career. He played the following summer in the Florida State League before returning to New England, where he earned his start in coaching at the University of Vermont, with the NCAA's other Catamounts. That opened eight developmental years where he honed his leadership philosophy with five different programs.
Raleigh first parlayed the Vermont position into his return to western North Carolina as an assistant coach in 1993-94 on staff in Cullowhee. In six seasons as either a player or an assistant coach, Raleigh helped lead WCU to four SoCon Championships – two apiece in both roles – and advanced to four NCAA regionals. The 1994 squad led the SoCon with a league-best .295 team batting average.
Raleigh then bounced from Belmont Abbey (NCAA Division II), James Madison, and East Carolina over the next five seasons, before trading in the other two shades of purple and gold of his alma mater in 2000, with his first head coaching opportunity coming at WCU.
In addition to earning league coach of the year accolades, Raleigh was also named the North Carolina Baseball Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 2003. He coached three SoCon Players of the Year in Donovan Minero (2002, media),
Alan Beck (2003, coaches), and Kenny Smith (2007, coaches & media). Between 2000 and 2007, a combined 12 Catamount baseball players were drafted, with three others signing as free agents. Of those 15, three – Greg Holland, Jared Burton, and Charles Thomas – each played in the Major Leagues.
Todd Raleigh joins his former head coach, Jack Leggett (inducted in 2001), former teammate and head coach Keith LeClair (inducted in 2002), and his brother Matt Raleigh (inducted in 2004) in the Western Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame.
A two-time graduate of WCU with his undergraduate degree in 1991 and his Master of Science degree in 1994, Raleigh is married to the former Stephanie Deitz of Sylva, N.C., and the couple has four children – Cal, who played collegiately at Florida State and plays in the Majors with the Seattle Mariners; Emma Grace, who played collegiate volleyball at Bradley; Carley, who started her collegiate volleyball career at Mercer and is now at Lincoln Memorial; and Todd Jr., who caught while his father pitched to his brother Cal in winning the 2025 MLB All-Star Game Home Run Derby.
Alisha Bradshaw remains one of the most decorated field performers within a storied Western Carolina University track & field program. The Salisbury, N.C., product was a four-time Southern Conference Most Outstanding Performer, twice earning honors during both the indoor and outdoor seasons in 2013 and 2015. She is one of just two Catamount women's student-athletes to earn multiple Field Athlete of the Year awards, joining fellow Hall of Famer Laura Tieszen (2004-05).
Her litany of awards includes Southern Conference Outdoor Track & Field Freshman of the Year honors in 2012, collecting All-Freshman honors in four different events – indoor shot and weight throw, outdoor discus, and hammer throw – as a rookie. She was a three-time champion in the weight throw in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and thrice won the SoCon women's shot-put competition.
Bradshaw's efforts allowed WCU to win three straight SoCon Women's Indoor Track & Field Championships from 2013 through 2015, and post a runner-up finish in 2012 indoors. The Catamounts also won the SoCon Outdoor Championships twice in 2013 and 2015, also posting a pair of runner-up team showings in 2012 and 2014.
Bradshaw was a four-time SoCon Field Athlete of the Week from 2012-14, one of just five SoCon student-athletes to collect four or more weekly plaudits in a career. She is also WCU's only three-time SoCon Outdoor Field Athlete of the Month, earning honors in March 2013, April 2013, and April 2015, one of just two SoCon women to have more than two monthly awards.
Bradshaw continues to hold the Western Carolina indoor track & field records in the shot put (15.04m), set in the 2015 SoCon Championships, and the weight throw benchmark at 19.27m, thrown in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 2014 at the JDL Fast Track. She additionally has WCU's top mark in the women's discus throw in the outdoor record books at 49.81m, unleashed at the Florida Relays in Gainesville, Fla., back in 2015. Additionally, in WCU's outdoor records, Bradshaw holds two of the top five distances in the shotput – third at 14.33m (2013) and fourth at 14.14m (2015) – while also possessing two of the top five distances in the hammer throw – second with a mark of 53.36m and third at 53.08m.
In 2021, Bradshaw was again recognized as she was listed on the prestigious Southern Conference 100th Anniversary team, honoring the greatest student-athletes in the league from 1921 through 2021.
Bradshaw gained her start in track & field thanks to her late mother, Glorida Bradshaw, who was a founding member of the Salisbury Speedsters Track Club. She was a three-time individual state champion at Salisbury High as a prep, twice in discus and once in the shot put, which put her on the map and landed her in Cullowhee.
Enshrined along with her teammates on the trendsetting 2002-03 Western Carolina women's golf team,
Ashley Hovda Kress takes her rightful place among the Catamount immortals as an individual inductee into WCU's Athletics Hall of Fame, celebrating her contributions to laying the foundation for the program's success.
Kress was a three-time All-Southern Conference selection on the links, earning second-team recognition in 2004 and 2005 before collecting first-team plaudits in 2006. She was also one of just two WCU women's golfers to earn a trio of SoCon Women's Golfer of the Month accolades, joining Brandy Andersen (2003-06). During her Catamount career, Hovda recorded 17 Top 10 individual finishes – the third-most in program history – including nine Top Five showings with individual medalist honors three times. She twice won the team's home event, the Great Smokies Intercollegiate at the Waynesville Country Club, in the fall of 2004 and 2005, while also winning the Elon Sea Trails Intercollegiate in September 2005.
Kress continues to hold WCU's seventh-best single-season scoring average, averaging 74.81 over 26 seasonal rounds in 2005-06. She additionally has the top and third-best, 36-hole scores in program history with a two-round record of 134 (68-66) in winning the 2005 Great Smokies Intercollegiate, while ranking third with a 138 (68-70) at the Elon / Sea Trails Intercollegiate held in the fall of 2005. Over her outstanding four-year career, Hovda held a 77.38 stroke average over 105 career rounds, tied for the fifth-most rounds representing the Catamounts. She fired five career rounds in the 60s, twice shooting a school-record tying low round of 66, both coming in the fall of 2005.
While an undergraduate, Kress qualified and played in the 2005 Women's United States Amateur Golf Championship. Also, during the summer of 2003, she scored a runner-up finish in the Ohio Women's Amateur.
Kress recorded three Top 10 finishes at the Southern Conference Women's Golf Championship, guiding WCU to a fourth-place showing in 2005 with a career-best runner-up finish individually that marked the second-best placement by a Catamount at the conference champion crowning event. She also finished in fourth place in 2004 and eighth in 2006. She was a part of WCU's SoCon Championship team in 2003, as well as runner-up finishes in 2004 and 2006 as part of the program's best four-year run.
Originally from Springfield, Ohio, Ashley Hovda Kress was one of just two Catamount women's golfers selected to the SoCon's 100th Anniversary team, joined by Desiree Karlsson (2006-10). She was a two-time Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) All-American Scholar in 2002-03 and 2003-04, and was a three-year member of WCU's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), serving as the women's golf representative as a sophomore, the vice-president as a junior, and the committee's president in her senior year.
Ashley is married to Catamount men's golf alum Chase Kress (2001-05), and the couple has two sons – Knox and Maxwell.
An athletic training student at Western Carolina from 1980 through his graduation in 1984,
L. Ray "Slim" Davis Jr. earned an honorary induction into the WCU Athletics Hall of Fame with the 2025 class. This year's enshrinement marks his third Hall of Fame nod, selected to the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Trainers Association (MAATA) Hall of Fame in 2022, and in 2015, he was inducted into the North Carolina Athletic Trainers Association (NCATA) Hall of Fame.
Davis received his Bachelor of Science in Health Education at Western Carolina in 1984 before earning his master's degree in Sports Medicine from the United States Sports Academy in 1986. Following his graduation, he served as an assistant athletic trainer at UNC Charlotte, and served in the same role, as well as a CPR instruction at Washington & Lee University before moving into middle and secondary education, including Apex High (19990-95), West Lake Middle (1995-2008), John A. Holmes High (2008-13), and Southeast Guilford High School (2013-2020), serving as a health science teacher and athletic trainer at Southeast.
His professional training experience also includes the National AAU Junior Olympics, IBM Fitness Center & Marriott Corporation (1988-90), and was the head athletic trainer with the Harlem Globetrotters and Washington Generals (1986-88).
Davis served in a variety of roles within the NCATA and the MAATA, including as the association's treasurer for the NCATA. Serving 16 years in that role, he performed a remarkable job of overseeing the financial records of the organization and was also elected to assume the same role with the MAATA. He also served as the MAATA Evaluator of the Student Research Committee (2004).
During his illustrious career, Davis was selected to represent North Carolina at the annual Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas football game in 2011, and in 2009, joined the East-West staff in covering the East-West All-Star football game. He was named the Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 1999 at West Lake Middle, and has been recognized by both the NCATA and the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA) with 25-year Service Awards. He received the NATA Service Award in 2013 and in 2014, was named the Secondary School Athletic Trainer of the Year.
Davis was also a volunteer trainer for the Special Olympics and events such as the Annual Spooktacular Run and the Spring Kiwanis Run. He is currently the MAATA District 3 Director and serves on Western Carolina's Advisory Board for the College of Health and Human Sciences, representing athletic training.
Founded in 1990, the Western Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame pays tribute to those superior Catamount student-athletes, coaches, administrators, and alumni who have made major contributions to the honor and fame of WCU and Catamount Athletics. Including this year's induction class, the WCU has enshrined 137 individuals, six athletic teams, 11 Patron Award recipients, and three individuals recognized for career achievements since its creation.
To be considered for induction into the WCU Athletics Hall of Fame, nominations must be submitted in writing to the Hall of Fame committee, where they are kept on file for five years before the nomination needs to be refreshed to remain active. A file for every nominee is kept and includes items such as biographical information and letters of support that the committee considers during the voting process.
Each spring, the committee convenes to vote upon a list of nominees that are approved by the Hall's executive committee, which vets those nominated against the criteria put forth by the Athletics Hall of Fame Constitution. The appropriate nomination forms are available at
CatamountSports.com as an online form and
as a PDF.
