By Mike London
Salisbury Post
MOUNT ULLA — Senior guard Tiara Thompson became the 18th to score 1,000 points for West Rowan’s girls program in the recent Sam Moir Chritmas Classic, but her journey has been different than that of the 17 who preceded her.
There was a detour on the UNC Wilmington signee’s voyage to Thousand Island. There was a bagel, a zero, a zilch where her junior year at West would have been. The 5-foot-7 guard resumed her 1,000-point quest as a senior.
“I’m just happy to score 1,000 as a West Rowan Falcon,” Thompson said. “It definitely means a lot.”
West head coach Ashley Poole obviously loves Thompson like a daughter, but she has put the coach through a wide range of emotions.
“I’ve never been madder than the day Tiara told me she was leaving West,” Poole said. “I’ve never been happier than the day she she told me she was coming back.”
Backing up to West Rowan Middle School for a moment, Poole knew even then that Thompson would be a Division I player.
“The first day she walked into the gym in the eighth grade, I could see she was different,” Poole said. “She’s always been different on a basketball court, and I mean that in the best possible way. I’ve always encouraged her to be different and I want her to stay different. Her skill set as a point guard is excellent, but it’s her basketball IQ that separates her. Her confidence and her demeanor is different. There’s a calmness. She has a poise about her.”
When Thompson was a West freshman, Poole said she had a chance to be about as good as anyone the Falcons ever had, and Thompson lived up to that bold prediction. She was playing with a solid group of talented older players — three of them who would be 1,000-point high school scorers — but she not only blended in, she stood out. Even the games that she didn’t start, things changed when Thompson got off the bench. Ball movement and offensive efficiency increased. Turnovers decreased.
It was no shock that West ran the table in the 2022-23 season, went 31-0 and won the 3A state championship. Thompson averaged 12.2 points, third on the team. She put a 20 and a 22 in the scorebook during the Falcons’ playoff run. She produced a 15/10 double-double in the championship game against Rocky Mount. Lauren Arnold won the first of her two state MVP awards, while Thompson was honored as West’s Most Outstanding Player.
Thompson’s sophomore season was like an instant replay. West had graduated Jamecia Huntley, DeDe Cuthbertson and Sarah Durham and wasn’t as deep, but with a core group of five talented, experienced seniors and Thompson, the Falcons shook off an early 77-73 loss to 4A power Lake Norman, went 31-1 and repeated as 3A state champs. Thompson was one of five Falcons who averaged double figures. She averaged 12.3 points, third on the team. She scored a team-high 18 in the state title game against Fayetteville’s Terry Sanford, boosting her career points total to 770.
What happened next wasn’t any fun for the Falcons. That unique Class of 2024 graduated, a class that included Arnold, who is now a starting forward at Lenoir-Rhyne, and Emma Clarke, the NCHSAA Female Athlete of the Year who has a good chance to be a softball star at Tennessee.
Poole still wasn’t losing sleep. With Thompson, plus Aubrey Martin and Lydia Wilson, the top reserves from the championship team, she was confident the Falcons could still handle anyone in Rowan County and could contend in the South Piedmont Conference.
Wilson decided to focus on volleyball.
By the time the 2024-25 season arrived, Thompson had decided to transfer and Martin was sidelined by an ACL injury. The Falcons were reduced to playing mostly freshmen in a pretty solid league. They went from 16-0 in the SPC to 0-16 in one season.
Thompson played her junior year for Mount Zion Prep Academy in Lanham, Md. She scored 229 points, averaging 8.5 points per game on a high-powered team.
“It was very good competition,” Thompson said. “We traveled to play teams in other states. It was good exposure and I learned a lot.”
Thompson said her season at Mount Zion Prep didn’t change impact her recruiting picture much. UNC Wilmington has loved Thompson since it first saw her when she was a West freshman. She always stayed at the top of their list, and the Seahawks stayed at the top of Thompson’s list of schools. She signed without drama in November.
Thompson decided to play her last high school season for Poole and for West Rowan. She wanted her senior year to be as much fun as possible. It was news that overjoyed Poole.
“Yes, it was a big decision to return to West,” Thompson said. “But playing for West was best for my family, and the support system I have at West always has been great.”
Thompson’s return has coincided with Martin’s return to health. Thompson, who was MVP in the Christmas Tournament, averages 24.2 points and leads Rowan County girls in scoring by a lot. She already has scored 30 or more four times.
Martin is third in the county in scoring and has scored 18 three times.
West Rowan is 12-0. All the wins haven’t been pretty or impressive, but even when they’ve had to fight through draughts and lapses, the Falcons have pulled games out. The Moir semifinal with underrated Central Davidson could have gone either way, but Thompson drilled the decisive shots, including two big 3-balls, and scored 26.
“Tiara has scored a lot of points, but it’s not just the points, it’s her leadership on the floor that has been the biggest difference-maker for our team,” Poole said. “In tough situations, there’s no panic because Tiara will stay calm. It’s like having an assistant coach in a uniform. There will be times when we need her to go get the ball and to take big shots, but that’s not to take anything away from our other girls. Those girls that were 2-21 last season and took all those losses without Tiara and Aubrey have worked so hard to get better and they have improved so much. Even in games where Tiara hasn’t scored big, we’ve been able to win with different girls chipping in. Their confidence level has changed a lot in the last year.”
Poole said the three adjectives that best describe Thompson are team-first, humble and quiet, but she’s still different on the court, just as she was when she was an eighth-grader.
“My skills have improved since I was a sophomore,” Thompson said. “But the biggest way I’ve improved in the last two years is leadership. I try to keep the young girls calm. I try to talk to everyone and give them confidence.When this season started, I don’t know if anyone thought we could be 12-0, but we’ve played together and we’ve been winning a lot of games.”
