Undefeated 1975-76 Lady Comets
By Mike London
Salisbury Post
NEW LONDON — When he answers the phone, Lonnie Chandler, 85 years young, is in his basement working on a dollhouse for one of his great-grand children.
“I stay busy working with wood these days,” said Chandler, part of the Class of 1963 at Catawba College.
There was a time when Chandler stayed busy teaching school and coaching girls basketball. He was one of the best ever to do it, a legend in Stanly County because the North Stanly Lady Comets were hard to beat for a very long time. His North Stanly teams won almost 71 percent of the time during his 33-season tenure that lasted from 1964 to 1997. He coached 556 wins, won 13 championships, had a 34-game home winning streak and experienced only four losing seasons.
“We had great players, we had great parents and we had the support of the administration,” Chandler said. “It takes all those things to build a winning program.”
Chandler’s greatest team was on the court in the 1975-76 season. They went undefeated, 26-0, and were champions of the old Western North Carolina High School Activities Association.
While the WNCHSAA only consisted of four conferences, those four leagues, which included the South Piedmont Conference and North Piedmont Conference, were packed with dynamite athletic schools. There was no comparable entity to the WNCHSAA in eastern North Carolina. It’s likely that most WNCHSAA champs would have been strong contenders for NCHSAA crowns.
There were 38 schools in the WNCHSAA in 1975-76.
North Stanly had to beat strong teams from East Rowan, Mooresville, Davie County and North Iredell just to win the 11-team NPC. The closest games North Stanly had were NPC games against East Rowan (50-47) and Mooresville (60-57). East, which had Kathy Sapp and Lu Holshouser, among others, was 22-5 and 13-2, with its only league losses coming against North Stanly.
“We got in early foul trouble at Mooresville, got down 17 points,” Chandler said. “But we played a great second half and won by 11. Our girls simply refused to lose.”
The Elite Eight that gathered at Catawba College in late February through early March 1976 to determine the WNCHSAA title were North Stanly and East Rowan from the NPC; Statesville and Trinity from the SPC; Alexander Central and Hibriten from the Northwest Conference, and North Gaston and R-S Central from the Southwest Conference.
The championship game between North Gaston (27-1) and North Stanly was hyped as a game-of-the-century matchup. It was no contest. The Lady Comets romped 63-41. They were that good.
North Stanly also won 70-40 in the semifinals against a 23-2 Statesville team.
“We won every game we played and we won everything we could win,” Chandler said. “So when you talk about us winning the Western Association, we’ve always looked it as a state championship. For the North Stanly community, it was a state championship.”
Krystal Kimrey, who was 6-foot-5, was the MVP of the NPC Tournament and was the most famous player on that team. Kimrey had a 40-point game against East Montgomery and averaged 23.2 points that season.
Chandler summed up his basketball scouting philosophy in a few words. “If a girl has to duck her head getting off the bus, she’s a prospect,” he said with a chuckle.
Kimrey definitely had to duck, whether she was getting off buses or walking into gyms.
When teams focused their defense on containing Kimrey, Linda Spivey usually came through. East Rowan held Kimrey to nine points in an early-season game, but Spivey scored 23 to lead a 50-27 victory.
Spivey averaged 15.2 points for the season and was MVP of the WNCHSAA Tournament for scoring 68 points in three games. Kimrey totaled 49 points in that climactic tourney.
The Lady Comets also got double-figure outings from Jo Ritchie, Robin Aycock and Tammy Hatley. The Lady Comets averaged 65 points per game, while allowing 37.
“We had a really good team because it was an unselfish team,” Chandler said. “Our bench was big in some of the tougher games with East, Mooresville and Davie. When you played Jesse Watson’s East Rowan teams and Bill Peeler’s Davie teams, you always had to be ready to play.”
The 1975-76 Lady Comets were ahead of their time in some respects. They put together a six-team summer league, which was unusual for the time. In the 1970s, basketballs didn’t usually start bouncing until November. They raised money to finance the league by selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the community. Chandler would drive to Salisbury and return with a carload of doughnuts.
The girls who made history in 1976 are senior citizens now, but they haven’t been forgotten. A celebration in the North Stanly gym is scheduled for Jan. 16 when North Rowan’s basketball teams visit North Stanly. North Rowan was one of North Stanly’s NPC adversaries in 1975-76.
The 1975-76 WNCHSAA champs will sit behind the varsity team and they’ll be introduced one by one before the start of the boys game. Chandler said the ceremony is scheduled to last for about 12 minutes. The members of the 1976 North Stanly boys team — they were really good, as well, with players such as Darrell Mauldin and Jed Brooks — will escort the girls.
“We’ve also invited the cheerleaders from that season,” Chandler said. “We want their support. We promise we won’t ask them to do any flips.”
A fundraising effort was launched in early November to pay for commemorative rings for each of the ladies on the 1975-76 team. By Nov. 26, all the rings had been paid for. They’ll also be receiving gift boxes.
One team member has passed away. Kim Williams will be represented by her mother and daughters. Aycock, the point guard for the 1975-76 Lady Comets, is also expected to miss the event, although she’ll get a ring. She’s had knee replacement surgery scheduled for a while, and it’s just a few days before the ceremony.
Chandler, who started the women’s program at Pfeiffer, was inducted into the Stanly County Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Catawba College Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. The North Stanly Gym was named for him in 2013.
He coached North Stanly to district championships in 1985 and 1991. In 1976-77, the Lady Comets, led by Spivey and Betty Cunningham, were WNCHSAA runners-up, losing in the final to North Gaston. That was the last girls basketball game played in the WNCHSAA.
Chandler said Kimrey was instrumental in getting the reunion/celebration put together.
“She’s spent a career working in youth detention and reform centers,” Chandler said. “She knows how to find people.”
Kimrey was one of the first women’s basketball scholarship athletes at the University of Maryland in the days when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was still the governing body for women’s college hoops. Maryland was a national power during Kimrey’s time there and won the first two ACC women’s tournaments that were held in 1978 and 1979. Some trace the trigger for the growth of women’s college basketball to the 1978 Maryland-UCLA national championship game that put 9,000 fans in the seats at Pauley Pavilion. Kimrey played in that game.
Kimrey wasn’t a star at Maryland as she played behind 6-foot-4 All-America Kristin Kircher most of her career, but she was a solid contributor every year. She averaged 9 points and 6 rebounds as a senior leader for the Terrapins. As a freshman, she set the school record with eight blocked shots against James Madison.
1975-76 ROSTER: Paula Almond, Kathy Arey, Robin Aycock, Joy Barringer, Sherri Blalock, Kim Faulkner, Debra Hatley, Tammy Hatley, Krystal Kimrey, Jo Ritchie, Cheryl Sikes, Linda Spivey, Kim Williams.
Head Coach: Lonnie Chandler
Assistant Coach: Stan Napier
NPC TOURNAMENT: North Stanly 57, South Iredell 39. North Stanly 63, North Iredell 37. North Stanly 66, East Rowan 58.
WNCHSAA TOURNAMENT: North Stanly 50, R-S Central 43. North Stanly 70, Statesville 40. North Stanly 63, North Gaston 41.
