Bob Pharr
Bob Pharr (left) and James Teal. 2002 Salisbury-Rowan Hall of Fame indcution. Photo by Joey Benton.
By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY – Bob Pharr, one of the coaching greats of Rowan County sports, has passed away at 91.
Pharr coached several sports and was a successful AD, teacher and administrator, but he is a legend mostly because of his Salisbury High basketball teams. He was elected as part of the second Salisbury-Rowan Hall of Fame class in 2002.
“Coaches had a lot more control of basketball games when he coached, and Coach Pharr was one of the best,” said Sam Gealy, who coached North Rowan teams against Pharr and later served as Salisbury’s coach when Pharr was AD. “He was an intense competitor and his teams were always disciplined and tough.”
Pharr wasn’t a stomper or screamer, but there was a quiet fire burning inside him. The trademarks of his teams were patient, share-the-ball offense and a tenacious 1-3-1 matchup zone defense.
“Scores were usually low because opponents had to work so hard to get a shot,” Gealy said. “There was a season (1978-79) when we had a very good team at North Rowan and we were fortunate enough to beat Coach Pharr’s Salisbury team three times. The first meeting was 49-45 in triple overtime. The other two (37-36 and 45-41) went down to the end. But then we played them for a fourth time in the conference tournament and Salisbury beat us pretty handily. By then, Coach Pharr had figured out exactly what they needed to do to beat us.”
Pharr’s 14-year run as a head basketball coach from the 1966-67 season through the 1979-80 season was remarkable – 252 wins, 100 losses. His winning percentage was .716. There are Rowan boys basketball coaches who had longer tenures and coaches who recorded more career victories, but he’s the only one since school consolidation and integration who coached at least 10 seasons and won more than 70 percent of the time.
There was a four-year stretch, from the 1968-69 season through the 1971-72 season, in which Pharr’s teams were totally dominant, winning 100 and losing five. In three of those four seasons, his team claimed the ultimate prize for that era – the Western North Carolina High School Activities Association championship.
The South Piedmont Conference was one heck of a league in those early days of integration. Pharr’s teams went 61-3 in the SPC in those four seasons.
***
Pharr grew up in Statesville, the youngest in a large family. He was an excellent athlete, excelling in baseball and basketball. He graduated from Statesville High in 1954 and headed as a scholarship athlete to High Point College to play both sports.
He pitched for the baseball team. Wearing the No. 11 jersey, he was a defensive-minded, ball-hawking guard for the Purple Panthers basketball squad.
Some of Pharr’s best playing moments came late in the 1957-58 basketball season, as he sparked a High Point comeback from a double-digit deficit to beat East Carolina in the semifinals of the North State Conference Tournament.
There was a brief detour from sports before Pharr became a teacher and coach. He entered military service, performing six months of active duty, plus a four-year commitment to the reserves.
When he got out of the service, he finished his college work at Lenoir-Rhyne before he launched his teaching and coaching career in 1959 at Troutman High in southern Iredell County.
In 1960, Pharr had a fling with minor league baseball, playing for the Statesville Owls in the Class D Western Carolina League. Statesville (38-62) was one of the weaker entries in the WCL, a league that was won by Salisbury.
Pharr married Judy Webb in June 1962. As Judy Pharr, she would teach home economics at East Rowan for 25 years. She retired from East in 1995 and died in 2003.
Pharr was hired as a P.E. teacher and assistant basketball coach by Boyden High in 1964. He assisted Don Graham for two seasons. When Graham, who was also the AD, left education for the construction business, Jack Turney, the wrestling and baseball coach added AD to his long list of duties, while Pharr was elevated to head basketball coach. Pharr also was tasked with assisting with football in the fall and coaching golf in the spring.
In the summer of 1966, Pharr was hired to assist Turney, who was the head coach of the Rowan County American Legion baseball team.
Pharr was promoted to basketball head coach at Boyden in May 1966, so his first season was 1966-67.
Pharr’s first game as Boyden’s head basketball coach was a 55-31 non-conference victory against North Rowan, but that would be a tough season. Boyden was the smallest school in the NCHSAA’s 4A Central Conference and went 10-12 overall and 5-9 in the league.
Prior to the 1967-68 school year, Boyden became a member of the WNCHSAA and the South Piedmont Conference. That meant Boyden could play natural rivals and schools of comparable size instead of traveling to Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
In Pharr’s second season, Boyden went 10-10 overall and 8-8 in the SPC, but a dramatic shift in Boyden’s fortunes was coming during a time of social change.
In the 1968-69 season, Pharr’s quad was reinforced by several Black athletes who had been standouts for coach Fred Evans at J.C. Price, most notably Charles Lynn and James Brown. Boyden won the SPC with a 14-2 record, won its last seven games and beat Shelby 56-50 for the WNCHSAA championship. That was the start of that four-year run of invincibility.
J.C. Price closed in the spring of 1969, ending an era. That meant full integration in Salisbury, and Boyden added the Red Devils’ last superstar, Kenny Holt, to a powerful roster.
Pharr’s 1969-70 team was a 26-0 whirlwind, with Holt teaming with Brown, Reggie Childers, James Partee, David Fisher and David Jones. Boyden stifled Marion 50-35 in the WNCHSAA championship game to finish a perfect season and stretch the program’s winning streak to 33 games.
An unblemished season was a difficult act to follow, but Pharr’s 1970-71 team, won the most celebrated game in Rowan County’s proud basketball history.
Boyden’s winning streak reached 38 games, but it was stopped by North Rowan. The Cavaliers won 47-45. Undeterred, Boyden, led by Holt, Donald Bunyan, Sheldon Shipman and Andrew Harris, won its next 24 in a row, including 16 straight in the SPC.
In the 1971 WNCHSAA championship game at Catawba, Boyden beat an undefeated Crest team led by future NC State and pro superstar David Thompson. Holt outplayed Thompson and the 1-3-1 zone stifled all the Chargers. Thompson had destroyed A.L. Brown and North Rowan earlier in the tournament, but Boyden held Thompson, who was averaging 29.7 points per game to 14 and won 41-33.
With 34 seconds left, Holt came through with the game’s pivotal play, a steal and driving layup for a 39-33 lead.
Thompson, who was about 6-foot-4, had an absurd standing vertical leap of 44 inches and he could bound 48 inches off the floor — that’s 4 feet — when he had momentum going.
Pharr was asked about the “Thompson Game” often over the years. The key, he said, was not changing what Boyden did well to try to deal with Thompson. Boyden played its standard defense. That was good enough.
The Boyden defense was ferocious in that the eight-team WNCHSAA Tournament, holding Cherryville to 25 in the quarterfinals and Marion to 27 in the semifinals.
Boyden officially became known as Salisbury High with the 1971-72 school year.
The Hornets still had Shipman, Bunyan and Harris and made a strong run at the school’s fourth straight WNCHSAA championship. They won their first 15 outings before losing in the SPC to Statesville. Then they won 10 more in a row before falling 46-44 to East Rutherford in the WNCHSAA semifinals. That team went 25-2 to cap the 100-5 four-year run.
In 1974, Pharr was head coach of the West team in the East-West All-Star Game.
The WNCHSAA dissolved after the 1976-77 school year. The Hornets and the rest of the Rowan schools returned to being members of the NCHSAA.
In Pharr’s last three seasons (2977-78, 78-70 and 79-80), the Hornets returned to glory, 22-9, 21-6 and 23-4, with four of those losses coming against Ashbrook teams led by James Worthy. The Hornets were district champs in 1978, North Piedmont Conference co-champs in 1979 and outright NPC champs in 1980. Pharr’s last team was led by Woody Boler, Clinton Little and Eddie Hipps.
Turney died from a heart attack in February 1980. Pharr completed that season as basketball coach. His final game at the helm was Salisbury’s 67-60 loss to Northwest Cabarrus in the district tournament.
Pharr assumed AD duties for the school shortly after Turney’s death and stepped down from basketball coaching after that season. Charlie Hellard followed Pharr as head varsity coach and coached the Hornets for five seasons.
Gealy returned to Rowan County as head coach of the Hornets for the 1985-86 season. He coached Salisbury to a state title in 1986-87.
Pharr’s time as AD included three three straight Wachovia Cups for the Hornets as the top athletic program among 2A schools. Pharr’s AD tenure included Salisbury state titles in girls tennis, boys track and boys cross country in addition to the basketball championship.
When Pharr retired as AD in May 1989. Gealy was named to replace him.
Pharr spent 30 years in the school system, the last 25 at Salisbury, a place he obviously loved. He taught a lot of lessons about teamwork and competing the right way and built hundreds of positive relationships.
