By Mike London
Salisbury Post
CHINA GROVE – Before she married Larry Deal, a long-running and blessed union that would lead to two athletic children and five athletic grandchildren – Deals and Chrismons – Diane Horton was a basketball star at South Rowan High.
A member of South’s class of 1967, she passed on Monday at 76, almost 10 years after her husband, who died from a heart attack in the fall of 2016. Larry Deal was regarded as Mr. South Rowan, a championship-winning basketball coach and a long-time football coach, track and field coach and athletic director. Behind the scenes, his wife was always part of that success.
Larry, a 1966 South graduate, wasn’t separated from his home county long. He played football at East Carolina, served activate military duty before joining the reserves and came home to marry Diane.
South was still known as the Rebels in Diane’s glory days on the court in 1965-66 and 1966-67. She was one of best athletes South had in the 1960s when the only sports for female high school athletes were basketball and tennis.
Beth Miller, who was probably South’s greatest athlete of the decade, graduated in 1965, leaving an enormous void on the basketball squad, as Miller had been a monumental player for her era, routinely scoring more than half of South’s points.
Fortunately, Horton was coming along right behind Miller. She was a sophomore when Miller was a senior and she was ready to lead the team as a junior.
Those were Western North Carolina High School Activities Association days for South and they were 6-on-6 nights for girls basketball, as the thinking at the time was that unlimited, full-court basketball would be too strenuous for the ladies to handle.
The first steps toward modern girls basketball in North Carolina high schools were taken in 1963 with a new rule that introduced the concept of the rover. While the game would still be 6-on-6, with four players on each team strictly limited to either their offensive or defensive zones (crossing the mid-court line was a violation), two rovers, the team’s best athletes, were allowed to play like boys. They were permitted to “rove” the full-court, playing both offense and defense. Athletes like Miller and Horton were rovers, pioneers for a more enlightened future.
The rovers proved the girls could play the full-court game, and the modern era of girls basketball, with five females on each team, with no restrictictions, became the norm in N.C. high schools by 1971.
Joyce Roseman Wilhelm was South’s coach in the rover days. A Granite Quarry girl, she had graduated from Appalachian State in 1963 and had been hired to coach the South girls varsity right after that. Her first team in 1963-64 finished dead last in the South Piedmont Conference, but Miller was able to propel Wilhelm’s second team to an overall winning record and a fourth-place SPC finish in 1964-65.
The only rural school in a conference full of city schools, South would do even better in the SPC standings during Horton’s years.
Diane was the daughter of Lonnie Horton and Ola Mae Winecoff Horton. Both were Rowan County natives, but Diane was born in Baltimore in 1949, so her arrival into the world may have come when her father was serving in the U.S. Navy. The Hortons were regular church-going folks, mill workers like most of the population of China Grove. Lonnie was a skilled machinist for Cone Mills and he also was elected as a China Grove alderman. He died in his 50s from a heart attack, but Ola Mae would live to see 80 before she passed in 2008.
There were no obvious clues to unusual athletic genes in the family until Diane suddenly blossomed into a star at South Rowan.
There were four strong girls basketball teams in the SPC in 1965-66. Statesville and Concord were league co-champions with 10-2 records, while South tied rival A.L. Brown for third with an 8-4 conference record. The top four beat up on the bottom trio – Albemarle, Thomasville and Asheboro.
Diane scored 23 points in a 45-38 win against Albemarle. Twenty-three points by an individual in that early rover era amounted to an explosion. South averaged only 30.6 points per game in the 1965-66 season, while allowing 29.8.
South managed to split with both of the league’s co-champions. Diane scored 16 in the 42-28 win against Concord. She averaged a team-high 11.7 points per game.
In the 1966-67 season, South won 14 games and went 8-4, good for third place in the SPC, finishing behind Concord (11-1) and A.L. Brown (9-3).
Diane had a super senior season that began with 21 points against West Rowan on opening night. She had 29 of South’s points in a 40-31 win against East Rowan. In the rematch with East, she had 28 in a 55-42 triumph. She tied her career high with 29 in a 53-46 victory against Statesville. She scored 22 in a double-overtime loss to Davie County. Her sixth 20-point effort of the season keyed a 48-34 win against Albemarle. She scored 342 points that season and averaged 15.5 points per game. She was second in SPC scoring behind A.L. Brown star Mary Lida Alexander.
Besides being co-captain of the basketball team her senior year, Diane was sports editor of the Southerner, the school yearbook. She sang in the chorus and represented South at Girls State.
She was voted the Senior Superlative of Most Athletic Girl in South’s Class of 1967.
She loved South Rowan, the UNC Tar Heels and her family for a very long time.
Services are scheduled for Thursday, July 16, at First Methodist Church in China Grove. Reverend Will Van Wieren, a former South athlete, will officiate. The family will receive friends from 3 to 4:45 p.m. on Thursday at First Methodist Church. Interment will be 10 a.m. on Friday, July 17, at West Lawn Memorial Park in China Grove.
