It’s 5 a.m. On the dark backroads of Mount Holly near Sandy Ford down to Morningside and beyond, Coach Eugene Farrar edges his 1997 two-toned Mitsubishi Montero Sport quietly through sleepy, warm September air, convincing himself these meandering, pre-dawn drives are a blessing.

He slows to the curb at seven, eight, sometimes nine houses just long enough for a young athlete to race from the front door and pile in. “Three or four would climb into the backseat, then the whole back was open, so another four or five would climb in there. The guys who had to get in the back, I’d get them last so it wasn’t so long a ride,” Farrar says.

A few minutes before 6, the Montero is in the high school parking lot. One by one, lights click on inside the gymnasium, beginning the day. It’s 2001.

Farrar is assistant coach of East Gaston High School boys basketball. He’s part-time on the school payroll, so he works a third-shift job, too. Sleep is irrelevant. His boys were on a mission.

Team members voluntarily gathered for a group meeting at the beginning of the school year. While their minds were still clear, before homework and exams and high school expectations set in, they devised a plan, because they knew when November came, they’d be high on sweat and adrenaline, and that’s no time for pondering.

“So we set down at the beginning of the year and we were like, as a team let’s figure out what we wanted to do,” says Tyler Berg, a 6-9 senior center, “and we wanted to put a banner up in the gym. There wasn’t one up there for basketball. So that was the goal: Win the conference tournament and go to State. What do we have to do to get to that point? How can we get that banner up there?”

Players asked school personnel permission to play pick-up in the gym after school. No dice. “Some kind of crazy rule,” Berg says. Farrar heard about the meeting.

“A lot of the basketball guys were playing football, and at the time with the 2002 team, I was working third shift so I couldn’t stay. But I knew we’d have to get in the gym if we were going to be able to compete,” Farrar says. “So I talked to [head coach] Ken Howell, and said we don’t have the advantage that Ashbrook has, or Huss has. When those guys finish playing football, they have a place to walk to after practice where they can play. We’d have to be in the school gym at 5 p.m., and I can’t go at 5.” So, mornings? “We asked, ‘What about 6 a.m.?’” Berg says. Coach Howell got the go-ahead from school personnel.

“We would get up at 5 or 5:30 and meet at the gym at 6 a couple mornings a week,” Berg says. “That way the football players could play, too, and we could build team chemistry and know what each other’s tendencies were, and build that bond. We did that until the season started, then in practices we’d reiterate what our goal was and all get on the same page. We’d say, we have good players and good chemistry. Let’s put a banner on the wall.” That 2001-2002 EGHS boys basketball team got its banner on the gym wall. It also compiled the best record in school history: 22-5. This year, it’s part of the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was worried they might be tired [after 6 a.m. workouts] and wouldn’t be able to function in their first and second classes,” Farrar says now. “But I got positive feedback from the teachers. They said, ‘It’s the most their scores have been up all semester. What are you doing?’ So that’s what those guys were able to do, to play together and play for each other.”

“He encouraged us to [practice early] and he was a major part of what happened with us,” says Aaron Forney, a 6-2 junior small forward, “and he would pick us up, because a lot of us didn’t have a license at the time. He did it for months, and we’d get to the gym and while others were sleeping, we were working. It was a unique situation. We had 13, 14 on the roster and in the early morning at least 11 of us would be there.”

“We had a really good team that year,” says Jason Sumpter, a 5-10 senior point guard and one of the players with a driver license. “Everyone wanted to do well and get better.” The team didn’t lose a game until the Christmas tournament.

“We lost a close game, then after Christmas break when conference play started, we lost to Ashbrook twice,” Berg says. “They were our toughest competitors in the conference. Other than that, we were in control.”