Amy Privette Perko, a former women’s basketball star at Wake Forest University and Kannapolis native, whose academic laurels were as well known as her athletic ones, has been selected for induction into the CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame.
Perko, who will enter the Hall as part of the 21st class, will be inducted with four other honorees on June 30 in Tampa, Fla. She is the first Wake Forest graduate to be inducted into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame.
Perko, who graduated from Wake summa cum laude in 1987, was a three-time Academic All-America selection as well as a two-time All-ACC performer on the hardwood. She was inducted into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. Perko holds a Wake Forest facility record for most points scored at home with 38 against Appalachian State at the Reynolds Gymnasium in 1986.
The Kannapolis native ranks among Wake Forest’s top 10 all-time in points, rebounds, assists and steals. Perko was also a William Louis Poteat scholar at Wake.
Perko won Wake’s Female Athlete of the Year award for the 1986-87 season and was chosen as the recipient of the 1987 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Perko continued her studies at the University of Richmond, where she received her master’s degree in sports management.
Perko worked at the NCAA for more than six years, and then at the University of Kansas as the associate athletics director and senior woman administrator. She left Kansas in 2001 to return to North Carolina when she was the first team president named by the National Basketball Association for one of its men’s basketball development teams, the Fayetteville Patriots.
An active member of the Fayetteville community, Perko is the executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an independent group of university presidents, trustees, faculty and former student-athletes who advocate for governance and policy changes in college athletics to ensure that athletics programs operate within the educational mission of their universities.
The class entering with Perko in Tampa includes Rebecca Lobo (Connecticut, ’95), Dr. Kenneth Caldwell (The Citadel, ’79), Nancy Hogshead-Makar (Duke, ’86) and Karen Jennings (Nebraska, ’93).