Some linebackers have a nose for the ball. Wells Black ’90 had sonar his senior year at Christ School.
At the time, his 137 tackles were a school record. It wasn’t commonplace for Greenie football players to make the Asheville Citizen-Times' All-Western North Carolina Team back then, but Wells did.
Off the field, he was a Prefect and Salutatorian.
The next chapter in Wells’ life has been honored with the Wells Black Scholarship at Davidson College. Its establishment comes posthumously – declining health forced Wells to retire from his law practice in 2015 and he passed away in May 2022 due to complications from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“Much like his commitment to everything else in life, Wells fought ALS longer and harder than we ever could have expected,” scholarship founder Chris Reinking said in a story published by Davidson.
“His caregiver told us Wells was the seventh person he had cared for with the disease, and he said to us after he died, ‘I can tell you right now the world has never seen someone like Wells Black when it comes to fighting ALS. Pure force of will.’”
Unfortunately, Wells' football career at Davidson never really got off the ground. An injury his freshman year forced him to give up the sport. He coached and taught at a private school in St. Petersburg, Fla., before earning his law degree from the University of South Carolina. Wells was a lawyer in Greenville, S.C., for 17 years.
The Wells Black Scholarship is designed for students who might otherwise be unable to afford Davidson – the total cost for a boarding student for the 2023-24 school year is estimated to be $76,450.