Football and baseball were the premium sports at Mount Holly High School in the 1960s, until the hiring personnel took on a man named Joe Spears, who formed a bunch of tall teenagers into winning athletes and gave that school something it had never seen.

“Joe was offered the coaching job, and he said it was only fitting that the school had wins in basketball and he wouldn’t accept that the school would continue with a losing record,” said Gary Neely, who was a 6-foot-3 guard on the teams of 1967-68 and 1968-69 and is friendly enough with his former coach to be on a first-name basis. “It took him awhile, but he got the boys and girls teams to levels they had never known before.”

The boys were all between 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-5, and they took over the gym later in the afternoons, after the girls finished running the bleachers. When it was time for away games, the whole crew would pile into the same bus, driven by a man named Leroy, who Neely said was their good-luck charm.

The 1967-68 boys team went 21-4, which got people’s attention, since the previous year’s gang was 12-9. “It sort of all came together. We had height and skill in shooting the basketball. He (Spears) was doing well with the talent he had, and he was building winning teams,” said Neely, who was a sophomore in ’67-78.

Neely and freshman Freddie Whitt (6-3) were the guards, Chick Moore (6-5) played center, and juniors Richard Jessen (6-4) and Dan Hope (6-1) were forwards. W.T. Clayton, Keith Hopper and Robbie McCorkle rotated in.

The team started the season with a 10-game winning streak, with a win at Tryon on a play that wasn’t executed the way it was called, and the girls started 10-0 also, and the people of the town took notice. “The very first game, we had less than a week to practice, because some of the guys played football, which had just won the state championship,” Neely said. “It was tied 54-54, and Coach Spears called time with 11 seconds to go, and we had the ball. He devised a play to get the ball to Richard with the final shot with 5 seconds to go, which would give us time if he missed. It was all perfect, except the ball came to me, with 5 seconds to go, and I took it and I made it. They (Tryon) had the ball inbounds with 4 seconds to go and took a desperation shot, but we won 56-54 and that started the 10-game streak, which was unheard of in Mount Holly.”

The boys lost three games the remainder of the season, but regrouped to win the conference tournament. “After that, we went on to win our first two games of the district tournament and were actually winning the final game at the end of three quarters, but a very good Hibriten team in Lenoir sprung a full-court trapping press on us and won going away,” Neely said.

Moore and Hope were seniors, and the following year Hopper and McCorkle became starters, and the crew was ready to prove that their success was legitimate. “We had outstanding players, and we were expecting great things for ourselves, but we sort of under-performed,” Neely said. The team started 7-7, but since that was not the standard they’d set for themselves, the boys went on another 10-game win streak, like the year before. “Only this time, it was at the right time of the year,” Neely said. “We won our last couple of regular-season games, then won three tournament games to win the conference tournament for the second year in a row, then proceeded to win the district tournament, including winning three more games in a row and beating Dallas in the finals. It was the fourth time that year we beat Dallas.”

That put the Hawks in the Class 2A state tournament in Winston-Salem, seeded eighth at 17-7, and facing a first-round game with the No. 1 seed, 26-0 Vaiden Whitley High from Wendell, N.C. in Wake County. Maybe it was talent, maybe it was a reputation to uphold, maybe it was a combination of everything the Hawks wanted to be, that led them to defeat Whitley by 15 points that Wednesday and advance to the semifinals. But since they were sitting in Winston-Salem without hotel reservations, the celebration occurred on the 85-mile bus ride home.

“We made the bus trip back to Winston-Salem on Friday, then lost the semifinals game to Bertie High School from down East, then lost the consolation game to Hendersonville,” Neely said, “so we finished No. 4 in the state for Class 2A at 18-9. But more importantly, we’d advanced farther than any basketball team from Mount Holly, girls or boys.”

With both teams being inducted into Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame, that success will forever be marked in history. “Those were good times,” Neely said. “It was good for Mount Holly and good for everyone connected with the team. Joe got us to levels that we’d never seen. Kudos to him, for being outstanding.”