Standing in the Hall of Fame
Rutledge Wood is a 1998 McIntosh graduate and a 2002 UGA graduate. At McIntosh, Rutledge was the Student Government President, voted Most Unique and he was Homecoming King. He is a car aficionado and auto racing analyst who hosted Top Gear US, Lost in Transmission and reported on NASCAR at Bristol Motor Speedway & Talladega SuperSpeedway. Since 2016, he’s been an NBC Sports reporter at the Kentucky Derby and also the winter and summer Olympics. He’s currently the host of Netflix’s “Floor is Lava,” which starts its fourth season this month, and he just wrapped “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge” for NBC. He’s also hosted or appeared on cooking shows on the Food Network and the Cooking Channel
Christie Ethridge Diez is a 2008 MHS graduate and a 2012 UGA graduate. At MHS, she was a 4-year Chiefettes State Champion; a Senior VIP and top 10 academic graduate and voted Miss McIntosh. At UGA, she was a Dance Dawg, a reporter at the university news station and graduated Magna Cum Laude. She’s now an Associated Press and Emmy Award winning Journalist at NBC Channel 11Alive in Atlanta, where she is a weekend news anchor. She’s reported from hurricanes, the Masters, the March on Washington, among many other topics. She was one of only 8 Journalists nationwide selected as Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow. The 3-part docuseries she produced about Dementia not only won an Emmy, but led her to create a Foundation to help caregivers which is named for her late father who passed away from dementia.
Brad Hort graduated from McIntosh in 2013 and from the University of North Florida in 2017. He is being inducted for cross country, track, swimming and baseball. Brad is one of the most productive runners to ever come from McIntosh. He is a two-time Individual Cross Country AAAAA State Champion; a three-time County and Region Cross Country Champion; a Finalist in the Footlocker USA National Cross Country Championships…and he led the Chiefs to a State Cross Country Team Championship. In track, he is a two-time County 1600meter and 3200meter champion, the State AAAAA 1600m Runner-Up and he helped the Chiefs win a State Track and Field Championship. He ran Varsity Cross Country & Track for 1 year at UGA before transferring to the University of North Florida, where he was three-year Varsity Letterman and helped lead the team to their first-ever ASUN Conference Cross Country Championship title. Brad also won 2K lifeguard beach races in Florida and California during the summer while he was in college.
The 1998 AAAA State Champion Girls Cross Country Team was the first XC team to earn MHS a state championship. After six previous attempts where the McIntosh girls placed either third or fourth in the state, this win was the very first state championship title in program history. All season long, Cobb County’s Walton HS had been ranked #1 in AAAA Girls cross country. McIntosh and Walton had met once early in the ’98 season – at the Berry Invitational – and Walton had beaten McIntosh. That year, the team top runners were four freshmen, a sophomore and two seniors. The McIntosh girls beat the second place place team from Collins Hill by 39 points. All five of McIntosh’s scorers placed in the top 20: freshman Mary Catherine Crofton was sixth overall, followed by freshman Judy Thomasson in 11th, freshman Dana Van Winkle in 12th, freshman Elizabeth Gardner in 15th, and sophomore Tina Paone in 20th.
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