By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY – A single phone call can change your life.
It was around 1980 and Thad Mulkey was shooting buckets in the family drive way in his Converse Chuck Taylors, the North Rowan point guard’s favorite thing to do in life, when his mother interrupted his intense solo workout.
“Phone call for you,” she said.
“Who is it?” Mulkey asked.
“Some girl,” said his mom, rolling her eyes and trying to hide a smile.
Mulkey is glad he stopped shooting long enough to take the call. Sonya Huffman, who ran the mile and the 2-mile for the Cavaliers’ track team, was on the other end of the line. She was a year younger, and definitely a tomboy, but he had to admit she was a cute tomboy.
She asked Thad what he was doing. He told her that, well, he’d been trying to practice basketball before he’d gotten a phone call. She told him she was bored. Would he mind if she came over and shot with him? It seemed like an odd request because she didn’t play basketball for the school team, but he couldn’t think of any good reason to say no.
“I spent the next hour or so rebounding and giving her back her change,” Mulkey said, laughing at the memory. “Sonya didn’t miss very often. She was a better shooter than I ever hoped to be. I’m sure that was the day I fell in love with her. A sweet girl that would shoot hoops with me. Dream come true.”
In the fall of 1983, a few years after their drive-way shoot-around, Thad and Sonya were married at Union Lutheran Church, a few miles east of Salisbury. Their children – Brett (baseball and basketball) and Kaci (volleyball and softball) were, not surprisingly, very good athletes for the North Rowan Cavaliers.
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Thad Mulkey grew up on a house on a hill near where the new Sheetz is located in East Spencer. His neighbors on both sides were Rushers.
Thad was a sports-crazy kid who played a version of “full-court” basketball in the house, shooting a taped-up rubber ball into lamp shades on opposite ends of the room. He threw the ball up on the roof and fielded the rolls off the gutters to simulate catching fly balls. He ricocheted balls off the garage doors when he wanted to practice fielding grounders. He rode his 10-speed bike over to Spencer to take part in pick-up games.
“I loved basketball and baseball and worked hard at it,” Mulkey said.
Mulkey had some athletic advantages. His father, Cecil, had been an athlete of considerable fame in Spencer and East Spencer in the 1950s. Thad also had an older brother, Terry, who never took it easy on him. Terry humbled Thad in the drive way daily and made him grow up quicker and tougher than he would have on his own.
“Terry was 5 years older and a very good athlete,” Mulkey said. “He would beat me with no mercy in our one-on-one basketball games. He just wore me out.”
Mulkey was unusually driven to be a good player. The family can remember him shoveling snow off the drive way so he could put up some shots.
“I know I drove my mom crazy because I would always be in her laundry detergent,” Mulkey said. “I’d wash my basketball and that would shrink it some, so I could palm it. Then I’d go out in the drive way and practice being Dr. J.”
Besides having a burning desire to be good, Mulkey had the asset of ambidexterity. He was naturally left-handed and a lefty shooter in basketball, but his father and brother didn’t want him to be limited to the left-handed positions in baseball (pitcher, first base, outfield). They saw his future as a shortstop, so he worked diligently on being a right-handed thrower. He became a totally right-handed baseball player.
“I played baseball right-handed, even batted right-handed, but ironically enough, I wound up playing in the outfield for Coach (Bob) Hundley at North Rowan,” Mulkey said.
Basketball was the sport where having a right hand as strong as his left helped Mulkey the most, especially as he developed as a point guard.
People ask Mulkey if he played basketball at North for Bob Hundley or Sam Gealy, and he can honestly say he played for both.
He first played for Hundley as a sophomore when Hundley was coaching the North jayvees. There was lots of talk about Mulkey moving up to the varsity that year, but North already had a good point guard (Charlie McCombs), and it never happened,
Mulkey was a junior in the 1979-80 season when Gealy, a former NC State player, was still coaching the Cavaliers. North went 12-11 overall and 8-8 in the North Piedmont Conference. Mike Harrison and Derrick Hill were the leading scorers. Mulkey averaged 10.8 points and got the ball to the scorers.
“Harrison was always telling me he was open,” Mulkey said with a laugh. “I’d tell him I had him on my radar.”
Mulkey enjoyed playing for Gealy.
“He wasn’t a yeller, but he was in my ear quite a bit being the point guard and he could get his message across just by the way he looked at me,” Mulkey said. “Whenever he called me ‘Mulkey,’ I knew I had to really buckle down. He’d let me know it when I needed to be doing better.”
North ‘s biggest victory of that season was over Bob Pharr’s very stout Salisbury squad that had a 23-4 season and went on to win the South Piedmont Conference.
“Before that game, Coach Gealy told me there was no way we could run with them, that I had to control the tempo,” Mulkey said. “Salisbury had a super squad, ranked high in the state – Woody Boler, Eddie Hipps, Clinton Little. Against the kind of size and talent they had, we had to be very creative on offense and defense. It’s not like I could take it to the rim and finish against Salisbury. Coach Gealy told us we needed to keep the game under 50, and we went out and executed the game plan. We won 44-42.”
Not long after that, North experienced its biggest disappointment of the season, a 47-45 loss to Davie County in the opening round of the Christmas Tournament at Catawba.
“No way we should ever have lost to Davie, but we were looking ahead to playing Salisbury again and we just blew a lead and blew the game,” Mulkey said.
The next night, North was playing South Rowan at Catawba in a consolation game. The Cavaliers built a nice lead, but then South roared back.
“Coach Gealy called me over and said, ‘Mulkey, are you going to let it happen again?'”
The Cavaliers were able to get it back together and beat the Raiders. Mulkey didn’t let that one slip away. He scored his season-high of 22 points.
Pharr stepped down as Salisbury’s head coach following that season, setting off a chain reaction of movement by Rowan coaching legends. Gealy moved from North to Salisbury to guide the Hornets. North, in turn, elevated Hundley from jayvee to varsity coach to replace Gealy. Hundley and Gealy stayed in those positions until both resigned after the 1997-98 season.
“I learned a lot from Coach Gealy and from Coach Hundley,” Mulkey said. “Coach Hundley, he wasn’t a screamer, either, but he knew how to get the best out of you. Both coaches had similar philosophies of basketball – patient offense, aggressive defense. Both of them stressed making that extra pass to get the best possible shot.”
Mulkey’s senior season the Cavaliers didn’t have anyone over 6-foot-2, and this was still well before the introduction of the 3-point line in high school ball, so the Cavaliers had their work cut out for them. Harrison had graduated. Hill chose not to play as a senior.
“Let’s just say we did a lot of blocking out drills that season,” Mulkey said. “We had to try to compensate for our lack of height.”
The 5-foot-11 Mulkey, who weighed 155 pounds, and 6-foot-2 forward Robbie Nichelson led North to a respectable 10-12 season in 1980-81. Mulkey averaged 11.6 points and scored a lot of 18s and 19s for a team that only averaged 46.
North played back-to-back double overtime games early that season, losing to Mount Airy but winning against West Rowan.
North managed a winning conference record (9-7) and tied for third place in the NPC. Mulkey played outstanding games against talented teams such as Lexington, Thomasville and Asheboro.
“Coach Hundley told me I would have to score more my senior season,” Mulkey said. “As a point guard, you always have to think pass first, but I did take more shots.”
Mulkey had a fine two-sport athletic career for the Cavaliers. There can’t be many athletes who made all-conference and all-county right-handed (baseball) and left-handed (basketball). That’s a claim to fame for him.
“There was a little bit of basketball interest in me from some smaller schools,” Mulkey said. “I had planned to go on to Rowan Tech (now Rowan-Cabarrus) after graduation, but then I got a really good job at the Food Town Warehouse. That was good money in those days, and I was very happy getting those regular paychecks. They changed thee name to Food Lion not long after that.”
Mulkey says his best basketball days may have been during his working years at Food Lion after his body had matured some and he’d gotten stronger. He played a lot of warehouse games with former Salisbury adversaries Little and Tim Rice, and they became good friends.
Food Lion provided a good life for Mulkey for decades, and his son and daughter grew up with a similar passion for sports, although he can’t recall Brett ever washing any basketballs.
Brett is 40 now and is a youth softball coach. He is married to Jac White Mulkey, who was a softball star at West Rowan and Catawba. Brett was the head coach of Rowan Little League’s 12U softball team last summer.
Kaci is 37 and is married to Jason Kluttz, who was a standout in football and baseball at Salisbury High. He’s currently the head coach of the Rowan Lady Legion softball team.
Jason and Kaci’s daughter, Lily Kluttz, was the softball player of the year for the South Piedmont Conference and Rowan County in 2025. She has signed with Catawba and is currently playing for the Lady Legion team.
“Between Jason and Kaci’s kids and Brett and Jac’s kids, there will be ball games to go to all summer long,” Thad said. “And there’s no place Sonya and I would rather be than a ball field.”
