High school basketball: 50th anniversary for girls Christmas tourney

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

SALISBURY — The recent Dale’s Sporting Goods Sam Moir Christmas Classic marked the 50th anniversary for the girls tournament at Catawba College.

Back in the 1960s, when people played vinyl records, had only four TV channels and read leather books and massive newspapers they actually held in their hands, the local high school hoops season came to a screeching halt every year when schools adjourned for Christmas break.

Teams continued to practice during the holidays, but practice gets old after a while.

Winston-Salem held an annual high school Christmas tournament — the Frank Spencer Classic — that was quite successful. That provided the inspiration. A conversation between (Boyden, soon to be Salisbury) boys coach Bob Pharr and Catawba men’s coach Sam Moir put the wheels in motion to get a Rowan County tournament started in the new Catawba gym that was dedicated in 1970.

Once North Rowan coach Walt Baker and Salisbury Post sports editor Horace Billings jumped on board, the project soon became a reality.

So Rowan boys teams took the floor in Catawba’s sparkling Goodman Gym in late December 1971, and Pharr’s defensive-minded squad won that first Christmas tournament by a 54-38 tally against West Rowan.

But there was no tournament at Catawba for the girls that year. Not yet. That would come a little later.

Lu Holshouser Gamewell, who played for East Rowan, remembers that the county’s girls basketball coaches got together and staged their own tournament in December 1974 at South Rowan. South went 3-0 in the event, including exciting victories in tight games against East and West.

The tournament at South drew such good crowds that the decision was made to add the girls to the 1975 Catawba Christmas tournament.

That first girls tournament at Catawba was won by an East Rowan team, coached by Jesse Watson. East rolled through the tournament, beating North Davidson 65-45; North Rowan 51-30, and West Rowan 63-33 in the championship game.

That was the season after Cristy Earnhardt graduated and headed to NC State, but the Mustangs still had a very strong team led by tournament MVP Kathy Sapp,  Holshouser and Antionette Hackett. The Mustangs went 22-5 that season, with three of the losses to the North Stanly team that went undefeated. East’s only other losses were a one-point game to North Iredell and an overtime setback against North Gaston in the Western North Carolina High School Activities Association Tournament.

Sapp was an excellent athlete. She lettered for a year in basketball at Virginia, and then transferred to UNC. She lettered in basketball one season for the Tar Heels, and then lettered in softball for two seasons.

Holshouser was equally talented, a Junior Olympics state champion in the discus. She was a Rowan County Female Athlete of the Year and became an early female track and field scholarship athlete at UNC. She recalls Coach Watson leaving right after the championship game to go to the hospital for the birth of his son, Brantly.

The girls have continued to be a big part of the Christmas Tournament every year except when the event was totally shut down by measles (1988) and by COVID (2000).

It was in 1996, on the 25th anniversary of the event he helped start, that the Christmas tournament was named in Moir’s honor.

Now Sam Moir Christmas Classics are played on Sam Moir Court. The legendary coach died in 2018, but his name lives on through Catawba’s gym and the popular tournament.

Salisbury has won the girls tournament 11 times. East is next with nine wins, while West is up to eight championships after winning last week. Davie has won six titles; North Rowan five; South Rowan four; Carson two, and North Davidson, Central Cabarrus and Northwest Cabarrus one each.