Try as we might, remembering to note everyone who deserves praise is well nigh impossible. Chapel Hill and Carrboro simply have too many quality athletes to keep them all in proper order.

Most towns our size would give front-page treatment to 6-pound bass and bowling scores of 289. Here, overshadowed by NCAA titles and all-pro players, you've just about got to be an All-American or a state champion to get noticed.

Which brings us to Cardin Jones of Carrboro High. Jones deserved, but failed to get a mention in our wrapup of the school year last week. He clocked a 49.41 in winning the 2-A state title in the 400 meters, two seconds off the state record. Not bad at all for someone who played three sports instead of concentrating on track. He might play basketball next year at Johnston Community College, rather than take one of his college offers in track and field.

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In giving Chapel Hill High's Keegan Ray some well-deserved praise for his superb progress in discus, we inadvertently dissed CHHS-Lincoln Hall of Fame member David Taylor.

Taylor, who played football for some of the best Baltimore Colts teams ever, still holds the CHHS record in the discus (171 feet, 8 inches) and shot put (58-2.75 feet), both set while winning those events at the 1968 state championship meet. Those used to be state records as well. Mike Salzano of Northern Durham now holds the shot record (61-4.5); Ben Huff of Charlotte Providence has the discus record (182-0).

Ray, a top defensive lineman on a CHHS team, bettered 150 feet with the discus, and now will get his shot to duplicate Taylor's two-sport success in college. Ray will play next year for the N.C. State football team.

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People want to note the end of an era. Chapel Hill High School has ended more than 20 years of membership in the state's 4-A classification, which comprises North Carolina's largest schools. With hundreds of students reassigned two years ago from CHHS to Carrboro, Chapel Hill is now once again a 3-A school.

Chapel Hill will join the Carolina Six Conference this year, along with Cardinal Gibbons, Northern Vance, Southern Vance, Orange and Oxford Webb.

The PAC-6 will keep seven of its members, including East Chapel Hill High School, and still will be called the PAC-6, which seems to mystify some people. The name stems not from its membership (e.g., PAC 10) but from its original district designation. After all, it wasn't called the PAC-8 when it had eight members.

By the way, there will be a PAC-6 2-A Conference, with teams like Randleman and Trinity, so keep an eye out for confused standings.

Elsewhere in the 2-A, the MidState Conference has been split down the middle. The Alamance schools remain in what will be the MidState 2/1-A, reunited with old rivals like Bartlett Yancey, Reidsville and Eastern Randolph. Carrboro, Cedar Ridge and Northwood will be in the newly christened "Carolina 9" with Durham School of Arts, Granville Central, South Granville and 1-A schools River Mill Academy, N.C. Science & Math and Raleigh Charter.

These changes benefit just about every school financially -- except CHHS. While most schools have lopped miles off their travel schedules, thanks to more compact conferences, CHHS has been given trips to northern Vance and Granville counties in place of multiple games in Durham against Northern and Southern, Jordan, Hillside and Riverside.

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Gates Benson didn't get enough credit for his tremendous career as a Guilford lacrosse defender. Benson was a captain of East Chapel Hill's 2004 state champions and played on a Quaker team that struggled for recognition in an ODAC league dominated by more traditional powers like Roanoke and Washington & Lee. Benson nonetheless became Guilford lacrosse's leader in ground balls and its first two-time all-conference player in more than a decade.

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Betsy Harvey was honored last week with a funeral service at Christ United Methodist Church in Southern Village. Harvey had died the previous week, after an all-too-brief fight with pancreatic cancer. Doctors had discovered her fatal illness only weeks before that.

Harvey was secretary to outgoing East Chapel Hill's Dave Thaden, who retires this summer after serving as the school's first principal for 14 years. Both were among the best friends ever to high school student-athletes, as witnessed by the number of coaches who joined faculty, staff and students packed into Friday's service.

Harvey was unflaggingly upbeat and kind, and was one of the few people in this school system who always answered the main phone line personally. No matter the request, if she couldn't help personally, she would find out who could.

Harvey will be missed greatly.

ewarnock@nando.com or 932-8743.