Some of my earliest memories include the sounds of basketballs…the rhythmic staccato of a dribble, the solid thump against a glass backboard, the springing vibration of a metal rim, the swish of a net. My dad took me to the junior high gym where he coached in Mecklenburg County as soon as I could walk. From there, I played hours on the asphalt cul-de-sac outside my childhood home and eventually found my way to the gymnasium where I spent the majority of my high school days, not playing but managing and scorekeeping for the Millbrook Wildcats. Every close friend and every guy I ever dated was a part of that team, and I loved every minute of it—from the daily practices to the games and everything in between. I spent hours crafting pre-game encouragement notes and treats to leave on the guys’ lockers week after week. I could sing along with all the beats that filled the air of every away-game bus ride. Rhymes by Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, Doug E. Fresh, Kurtis Blow, and the Beastie Boys still randomly shuffle through my mind’s soundtrack.

Throughout childhood, I clipped newspaper articles chronicling every Carolina Tar Heel basketball game and carefully adhered them to the pages of magnetic photo albums. As my senior year approached, I typed a resumé and secured a letter of recommendation from our former coach, my high school mentor Chet Mebane, in pursuit of my dream of being a Carolina basketball manager. Receiving the letter from Coach Bill Guthridge notifying me that I had been accepted as a Junior Varsity manager during my freshman year at UNC was almost as exciting as receiving my acceptance letter to UNC, my lifelong dream school and the only college to which I applied.

Being a Carolina basketball manager at even the JV level was exhilarating—a ton of work and even more fun. I spent countless hours of my freshman and sophomore years in the Dean E. Smith Center. We worked all JV practices, all varsity home games, and all JV home and away games. In the summer, we served as counselors for Carolina’s Basketball Camp. I smelled of sweat, oranges, and Gatorade as I slung towels, wiped floors, chased basketballs, and handed Dixie cups of Gatorade to players—J.R. Reid, Hubert Davis, Jeff Lebo, King Rice, Scott Williams, Rick Fox, and many others. I had the privilege of sitting behind the legendary Coach Dean Smith at every home game and will never forget the time he complimented my sweater as we passed in the Dean Dome stairwell that connected the locker room level to the basketball offices.

I let my Carolina basketball manager dream die on a vine that eventually choked out several other dreams and aspects of my identity. Like many teenage girls, I invested too much effort trying to secure a very unhealthy relationship and sacrificed friends, experiences, and beliefs along the way. In the years that followed, I attended games here and there and loosely followed some of the UNC teams from afar as military moves took me out of the Tar Heel State. But mostly I forgot the girl whose blood had bled Carolina blue all of her life.

In 2021, longtime UNC Coach Roy Williams retired. When his successor was named, I did a double take. Hubert Davis was my classmate at UNC and the player I knew the best in my time as a manager. We both wrote letters in the Dean Dome bleachers to our long-distance romances and even went on double-dates when they were in town at the same time. He was hard-working, kind, and humble and I had tremendous respect for him as a freshman surrounded by big stars—stars I later learned he had gone on to outshine. Graduating from college before cell phones or email addresses even existed, I lost touch with most of my college friends. With my head in the proverbial Carolina basketball sand for three decades, I had only a general awareness that Hubert had played professional basketball and spent some time as a commentator, so I was genuinely surprised to learn he had even been an assistant to Coach Williams, much less in the running to succeed him. But I have Hubert to thank for helping me find a piece of myself that went missing for far too long. 

Curious to see my former classmate coach, I began tuning into the UNC games late in the 2021-2022 season. My Carolina blue blood started pumping again as I pulled for this this come-from-behind team and its humble, faith-filled coach I respected so much even when he was just an 18-year-old freshman baller. I pulled out my 1980s Carolina newspaper clippings, dug up photos from my years of managing in high school, updated my UNC gear, and introduced my kids to the joys of being a Tar Heel. I will always remember the April 2022 night that we beat Duke in the Final Four, which was awfully close to as exhilarating as winning the NCAA title two nights later would have been (not quite, but VERY close).

This 2022-2023 season was the first time in thirty years that I have closely followed a Carolina team, watching almost every single game from start to finish. I have loved waking up on game days, choosing how the kids and I will rep the team, and timing our evening routines around timeouts so I wouldn’t miss any plays. It was a rough season that culminated in Carolina becoming the first team ranked number one in the preseason who did not even make the NCAA tournament. My heart broke for Armando Bacot and his fellow seniors and teammates who had descended from the mountain of the NCAA Finals to the valley of an NIT invitation. The social media chatter has been brutal! Seeing how fickle the “fans” can be, I made it a mission to always be the encouraging fan in the comments. We may be accustomed to success, but a true Tar Heel is loyal no matter what challenges a given team faces–the only kind of fan I want to be.

I lost so much of myself in my efforts to navigate adulthood, parenthood, and an unhealthy marriage. Over the past five years, I have slowly begun to pick up the lost pieces of myself and see how and whether they fit into my life now. I have been rediscovering loves I buried, digging up beliefs I denied, and reigniting passions I had forgotten. Part of the process has been accepting the loss of some of my dreams to broken promises and others to poor choices or my own martyrdom. Part of it has been making peace with my roles in life.

Remembering and rediscovering my passion for UNC basketball has not only been super fun but has given me a new perspective on a piece of myself. When I remember my years as a high school basketball manager, I think so fondly of the friends I made there and the times we shared. I think of how valued I felt by the coach and players as I repeatedly performed the monotonous but essential tasks of ensuring the players were hydrated, safe, and encouraged and that their efforts were accurately reflected in the scorebook. I never desired to be on the floor making the plays but thrived in my element of team caretaker and encourager. 

Picking up this lost piece of myself and reflecting on it in light of today has given me a new perspective on what appears to be my life work as a caretaker and encourager. Seeing it through the lens of my past joy as a Millbrook Wildcat and UNC Tar Heel basketball manager has helped me realize that caretaking, encouraging, and managing are actually central parts of my identity—how God knit me together—not something that just happened to me or that I must resign myself to accept. I willingly chose those roles as a teenager who had the freedom to make an array of choices. I played the roles naturally and well and found them very fulfilling. The people I met in those contexts were “my people,” and I have even reconnected with some of them over the past few years. The revelation that my life today actually reflects my heart thirty years ago has brought me much-needed peace and joy.

As I watch my Heels play each game, I always notice the hard work of the managers on the sidelines. A part of me will always wonder if I would have ever made the elite Varsity Manager team. The odds were not in my favor, but I’ll never know because I walked away from the opportunity. Instead of focusing on what I can’t recover, however, I am choosing to be grateful to have rediscovered something I temporarily lost. I am having a blast sharing Carolina basketball with the people I love most in the world—my kids—just like my dad shared it with me. 

I thought that when the NIT kicks off this week, I would be glued to my TV, decked out in Tar Heel gear, cheering for Leaky, Armando, Pete, Caleb, and R.J., regardless of what postseason tournament title they pursued. However, shortly after the NCAA brackets were announced, UNC Basketball released a statement saying that the team is choosing not to participate in the 2023 NIT. Coach Davis stated that “now is the time to focus on moving ahead,” a lesson I have learned well these past five years. I respect his discernment in making that choice and the wisdom of putting what his players need ahead of what may be expected. So I will pack my UNC gear away until next season when I will eagerly cheer on the next Tar Heel team. Win or lose, I won’t forget my roots again…

I’m a Tar Heel born.
I’m a Tar Heel bred.
And when I die I’ll be a Tar Heel dead.
So it’s rah rah Carolina-lina.
Rah rah Carolina-lina.
Rah rah Carolina-lina–go to hell Duke!

Welcome back, Carolina Girl. I missed you.