Charlotte Crown Adds to Rich History of Women’s Basketball in Charlotte

Charlotteans are known for staying home when heavy rain looms, but a darkening sky did not keep hopeful fans from flocking to the home opener of the Charlotte Crown, the city’s first professional women’s basketball team since the WNBA’s Charlotte Sting played its last season 20 years ago. 

Fans streamed into a sold-out Bojangles Arena on May 21 to support the fledgling Crown. They donned bright purple T-shirts, waved light sticks and mobbed the team’s merch store. Pregame festivities featured regional basketball greats Andrea Stinson and Rhonda Mapp, both veterans of NC State and the Sting, as well as lvory Latta, a three-time All-American during her time at UNC Chapel Hill.

The game served as a homecoming for women’s basketball in the Queen City. It also opened a new chapter in the local game’s long history. Women have played basketball in Charlotte since the early 1900s, just a few years after basketball was invented by James Naismith and adapted for women by Senda Berenson. 

A spotlight on this history shows how Charlotte-area women have propelled the game through sheer energy and determination.

A new game for the girls

Women competing in sports spurred controversy from the beginning, and the game’s history has been marked by fits and starts both nationally and here at home. But the pattern of advancements and setbacks didn’t kill the ambition of aspiring female players. Time and again, they navigated obstacles and found ways to compete. 

In 1907, teams from Charlotte’s Elizabeth and Presbyterian (later Queens) colleges caused a sensation when they scheduled the city’s first intercollegiate game. It was held at Elizabeth College, where Novant Presbyterian’s main hospital campus stands today. 

Residents eagerly followed the action, excited by what one reporter called “a scene such as is not witnessed every day in staid old Charlotte.”

But the prospect of young women clad in bloomers and engaged in vigorous play also sparked unease. Organizers barred male spectators and warned that “a close watch will be kept to see that none enter in disguise.” 

Undeterred, a few enterprising young men defied the ban by scaling nearby buildings to catch glimpses of the action. Some were chased down by police and briefly arrested. 

Despite – or perhaps because of – such enthusiasm, the spectacle proved too much for the colleges’ administrators, who were eager to emphasize their students’ female respectability. 

Despite the students’ love of competition, administrators soon limited them to intramural play – a strategy followed by most four-year women’s colleges across the country at the time.  

But even as intercollegiate basketball sputtered, younger women continued to pursue the sport, invigorated by a growing national movement to expand women’s rights and opportunities.

In 1920, shortly after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, a group of female students at Charlotte’s Central High School formed a team. Beneath their yearbook picture they placed a confident announcement: “Man’s age may have been heretofore, but now woman’s age is coming in, not only in politics but in athletics.”

The enthusiasm spread in Charlotte. 

Girls and women help make Charlotte a hub for basketball

“Basketball is the subject from morning until night,” reported the Dixie High School newspaper in the Steele Creek community. “If you ever see a small crowd of boys or girls standing talking together, you can guess they are talking about basketball.” 

A few years later, a budding girls’ team from all-Black Second Ward High School put out a call for players: “We want students from all classes. The only requirements are tennis shoes, shorts, and the will to win.” 

Basketball also thrived in the region’s textile mills. The manufacturers employed large numbers of female workers, and robust employee sports programs included women’s teams. 

In 1921, the inaugural year of the long-running Southern Textile Basketball Tournament, the first game featured two female squads. Charlotte’s Highland Mill team, based in what we know today as the NoDa neighborhood, took the women’s championship in 1924.

A vibrant competitive tradition also developed in historically Black colleges. Black communities generally had a more expansive view of middle-class womanhood than their white counterparts, based on the broad range of roles Black women played in their families and communities. 

Women’s teams from North Carolina schools reveled in dynamic matchups, which included teams from Charlotte’s Johnson C. Smith and Concord’s Barber-Scotia.

Across the region, young women took advantage of these opportunities, playing avidly through the hard years of the Great Depression, amid the sacrifices required by World War II and into the postwar era.

In 1949, Gastonia’s Highland High Ramlettes won the state championship held by the all-Black North Carolina High School Athletic Conference. MVP Gladys Thompson, who later married classmate Ervin Worthy, would make another contribution to Charlotte-area basketball history through her son, James. 

After starring at Gastonia’s Ashbrook High, James Worthy helped lead UNC Chapel Hill to the 1982 NCAA title and the Los Angeles Lakers to three NBA championships. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.

Although the all-white North Carolina High School Athletic Association did not sponsor a girls’ state championship for white teams, in 1950 a group of high school coaches took matters into their own hands and organized one. The Wolverettes from Lincolnton High School took home the crown, then repeated in 1951 and 1952. 

The region gained its first female All-American in 1953 when Mildred Little was awarded honorable mention. 

After starring for Catawba County’s Claremont High, Little had joined the powerhouse Hanes Hosiery team in nearby Winston-Salem. Her defensive skills helped propel the Hosiery Girls to the AAU title – considered the women’s national championship – in 1951, 1952 and 1953.

North Carolina fans also enjoyed the high-level play of touring professional teams, most notably the All-American Red Heads and Hazel Walker’s Arkansas Travelers, both of which played exclusively against local male squads. 

Elva Bishop, director of the documentary Women’s Basketball: The Road to Respect, vividly recalled the time Walker and the Travelers came to her hometown of Aberdeen: “To see her play, to see that women could be that good, it changed me forever.” 

But the prospects for most female players hit a wall as the 1950s progressed. Postwar conservatism drew increasingly sharp divisions between “male” and “female” activities. As men’s college basketball gained national prominence, North Carolina schools focused almost exclusively on that. 

One prominent college coach, thought to be NC State University’s Everett Case, actually blamed the popularity of women’s basketball for “causing a lack of interest around North Carolina in boys’ play.”

In 1954, the North Carolina state legislature banned state championship tournaments for high school girls. The highest most of them could aspire to was winning their county championship. Cheerleading became the top female athletic pursuit, relegating girls to the sidelines.

Women’s basketball returns from a lull

While some teams carried on across the country – mostly in small towns and rural areas – the sport would not revive in earnest until well into the 1970s, drawing energy from the women’s liberation movement and the 1972 passage of Title IX. 

The law, which required educational institutions to provide opportunities for both men and women, meant that schools had no choice but to support girls’ and women’s athletic teams, in most cases for the first time. A great deal of building lay ahead. 

When South Carolina native Judy Rose came to UNC Charlotte as a physical education instructor in 1975, her duties included starting the school’s first women’s basketball team. Only a handful of players showed up to her first recruiting meeting. 

When Rose sought to attract attention and recruits by writing to girls’ high school coaches, she ran into a harsh reality; none of Charlotte’s high schools had girls’ teams. Her letters went straight to the trash. 

Still, over time, teams took shape and players began to blossom across the area. The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association began its women’s tournament in 1975 and Johnson C. Smith joined the league upon reviving its squad in 1977. 

The Atlantic Coast Conference began women’s basketball competition in 1977 and hosted the nation’s first Division I conference tournament a year later. Rose got the UNC Charlotte team rolling and eventually became the school’s longtime athletic director. 

In the 1980s, Cornelius native Andrea Stinson began what would become an illustrious career. A 5-foot, 10-inch guard with quickness and leaping ability, she led North Mecklenburg High to two state titles and was named The Charlotte Observer’s NC Miss Basketball in 1987. 

Nicknamed “Stint,” she went on to become an All-American at NC State in 1990 and 1991, leading legendary coach Kay Yow’s Wolfpack squads to three NCAA appearances. 

In 1993, not long after Stinson lit it up at State, The Charlotte Observer tagged another Mecklenburg County student, Konecka Drakeford, as the best high school player in the country. 

A 5-foot, 10-inch wing forward, Drakeford put on scoring exhibitions at Providence Day High School under famed coach Barbara Nelson. As a freshman, she led the private school to its first state title, averaging 29.3 points per game and 12 rebounds. Sports Illustrated featured her as a sophomore. 

The day the article came out, Drakeford dropped 65 points at Forsyth Country Day — still a state public and private school record for single-game scoring. Opponents lined up for her autograph after the game. 

Drakeford started her college career at Virginia but left after a couple months over a rule issue. 

“Had she stayed … chances are that we could have been to a couple more Final Fours here,” University of Virginia coach Debbie Ryan noted to the Observer in 1998. Drakeford then played at Johnson C. Smith, where she led NCAA Division II in scoring (31.2 average) her second year and was named Division II Player of the Year her third. She went on to play 10 years with European professional teams. 

Another regional high school star also made big news in the 1990s. The cousin of NC State star David Thompson, Charlotte Smith from Shelby High School earned all-state accolades and became one of the top women to ever play at UNC Chapel Hill. 

In the 1994 NCAA title game, Smith launched the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” swishing a 3-pointer with 0.7 left on the clock and lifting the Tar Heels over Louisiana Tech, 60-59.

Two years later, thanks to organizational efforts by Judy Rose and others, the NCAA Women’s Final Four came to Charlotte, making the city the temporary center of the women’s basketball world. 

As sold-out crowds cheered on the teams, Garinger alum Tiffani Johnson, a 6-foot, 4-inch center who could play any position and expertly handle the ball, helped power the Tennessee Lady Vols, coached by the legendary Pat Summitt, to the 1996 title.

The enthusiasm at that year’s Final Four dovetailed with even higher energy nationally. The NBA had recruited corporate sponsors to support a year-long training tour for the US women’s Olympic team. The squad traveled worldwide and didn’t lose a game en route to winning the gold medal in Atlanta in the summer of 1996. 

The launch of the WNBA and the Charlotte Sting

The attention sparked by the achievement powered two professional leagues: the American Basketball League and the NBA-sponsored WNBA. The NBA placed WNBA teams in cities with existing NBA franchises, and the Charlotte Sting, owned by the Charlotte Hornets, was one of the original eight. 

Andrea Stinson, who had played many years in Europe, came home to join the team.

The NBA’s deep pockets and connections ensured more media exposure for the WNBA players, particularly through TV. The ABL could not compete and folded in late 1998, with most of its players going to the WNBA. 

The Sting acquired Charlotte Smith from the San Jose Lasers and Dawn Staley from the Philadelphia Rage. It took a couple of seasons for the new and old Sting players to meld, but when they did, they posted the franchise’s best season in 2001. 

A key component was new coaching hire Anne Donovan, a longtime pro and college coach and former Old Dominion star. 

Initially, the Sting struggled under Donovan’s new schemes, losing 10 of their first 11 games. But gears shifted and the team made a colossal turnaround – the greatest in the WNBA to date and one of the most spectacular in pro sports as a whole. 

The Sting won 17 of their next 21 games to make the playoffs with an 18-14 record. “Who would have thunk it?” said Staley, speaking to the crowd after the team’s final home game, one in which the crowd stood throughout a 80-60 win over the New York Liberty.

Spearheaded by Staley and Stinson, two 30-somethings, the Sting made the playoffs by upping their defense and rebounding to match their offensive strength. Other team standouts were top defender Charlotte Smith, rookie center Tammy Sutton-Brown from Rutgers; and 3-point shooter Allison Feaster from Chester, South Carolina, who arrived by way of Harvard. 

During her time in Charlotte, Feaster had a daughter named Sarah Strong, who would go to high school in North Carolina and earn Naismith National Player of Year honors in both high school (Grace Christian, Sanford, 2024) and college (University of Connecticut, 2026). 

The Sting’s hot hand didn’t stop in the playoffs. The team upset first the defending conference champion Cleveland Rockers then the New York Liberty, winning the conference to reach the championship series.

“That was the ultimate run we had,” Andrea Stinson recalled. “We had so much fun, especially beating New York in New York two times to win the Eastern Conference. My sister and brother-in-law were the only two supporting us in New York that I could hear, and they were sitting way up there” in Madison Square Garden. “Back home, my mom and family were in the street yelling; they just went crazy.” 

So did Sting fans overall, but the Los Angeles Sparks, led by finals MVP Lisa Leslie, soon clipped the Sting’s wings in the finals, sweeping the best two-out-of-three series in two games. 

Despite their excellent season, the Sting had a rough road ahead. The following year, Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn moved the team to New Orleans. The Sting stayed in Charlotte, taken over by the NBA. 

Donovan left the team because she was offered a three-year deal with the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, and the NBA would only guarantee one year, knowing that a new team owner would be coming in.

Bob Johnson, whose success in co-founding Black Entertainment Television had made him the nation’s first Black billionaire, won the right in 2002 to start a new NBA team in Charlotte. 

The first majority Black owner of a league team, Johnson named his squad the Bobcats and took control of the Sting, as was required by the deal. The Bobcats began in 2004 and posted a 44-120 record in their first two seasons. Johnson then let go of the Sting and the NBA was unsuccessful in finding a new owner. The league folded the Sting in January 2007. 

The WNBA carried on elsewhere, though profits often proved elusive as support for teams ebbed and flowed. But women’s college basketball continued to make a national mark, thanks to rising talent and compelling stories such as the heated rivalry between Pat Summitt’s Tennessee and Geno Auriemma’s UConn. 

In 2008, Dawn Staley arrived at the University of South Carolina, where she began to build a powerhouse team. One of her early stars was Tiffany Mitchell, a guard from Charlotte’s Providence Day who was the NC Gatorade Player of the Year her senior season and Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in 2014 and 2015. 

Mitchell went on to be a first-round WNBA draft pick, selected ninth. She has played 11 seasons in the league, though is not currently on a 2026 roster.

Charlotte Crown arrives in the Queen City

This spring, 20 years after the Sting played their last season, Charlotte welcomed its new pro team. Fueled by surging national interest in women’s basketball, the Charlotte Crown arrived compliments of the new UpShot League, founded to create a pro opportunity for players just below the WNBA level.

Led by former WNBA President Donna Orender, the UpShot League has four teams this season (Charlotte, Greensboro, Savannah, and Jacksonville) with plans to add two more in 2027 (Nashville and Baltimore). 

The league plans to expand to nine teams by 2030. The league is owned by Zawyer Sports & Entertainment in Jacksonville, Florida, which also owns the Charlotte Checkers hockey team, Gastonia Ghost Peppers baseball team and other minor league franchises.

UpShot teams have kindled local interest by recruiting players familiar to hometown fans. The Crown’s home opener against the Jacksonville Wave featured guards Deja Kelly, who played at UNC Chapel Hill, and Reigan Richardson, a Charlotte native who suited up at Duke.

Other familiar Crown players went to area colleges — South Carolina’s LeLe Grissett; Elon’s Quinzia Fulmore, Georgia Southern’s Nicolyn Gwynn; and Louisville’s AD Durr (known as Asia Durr in college), Kiki McGill Jefferson and Cori Lard.

In the Crown’s home opener, crowd enthusiasm couldn’t keep the team from falling behind early. But the energy helped the Crown climb back into contention, taking the game down to the final minutes before the Wave pulled away for a 98-86 victory. 

Fans left elated. Not even the torrential downpour greeting them at the exit dampened their spirits. 

Read more: Hornets Owners All in on Charlotte Sting Return (2025)

Since the Crown’s home opener, the squad has rebounded from a 1-6 start for a 13-10 record as of July 28. The Crown returns to Bojangles Arena on Thursday, July 30 and will play nine of their next 10 games at home to wrap up their UpShot season. 

As part of “Women in Sports Night,” the Aug. 5 Charlotte Crown game will include a pre-game talk on women’s basketball history featuring the authors of this article, Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford, alongside UpShot League VP of Basketball Operations Taj McWilliams-Franklin, whose stellar college and professional career earned her induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. A special ticket package, which includes a copy of Grundy and Shackelford’s book, Shattering the Glass, is available here.