Mary Church, Christmas Tournament.

 

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

GRANITE QUARRY — Rowan County girls basketball experienced a difficult 2024-25 season, with the total of wins by the six programs plummeting from 104 to 54.

East Rowan’s resurgence t0 21 wins under the leadership of coach Bri Johnson Evans was the ray of light in a mostly bleak winter. Johnson coached extremely hard from the bench and got a lot out of her team.

The engineer of East’s train, the extension of Evans on the court, was relentless 5-foot-6 senior guard Mary Church. Church gave her teammates confidence with her ability to score in every way and from anywhere. Even when teams face-guarded her and did everything possible to deny her the ball, Church and her teammates usually got the job done.

“You can’t work any harder than Mary does,” Evans said. “She was always in the gym getting extra shots up. She was a really good leader for us. Very vocal in practice as well as in the games, but she always led in a positive way.”

Church has been voted the Shayla Fields Award winner as Rowan County Player of the Year. Credit a committee of former athletes — Tristan Rankin, Dr. Darren Ramsey and Reggie McConneaughey — for making that decision. They had an easier one this season than in 2024-25 when West Rowan’s Lauren Arnold was the pick (and a good one) from a star-studded field of candidates that included North’s Brittany Ellis and Bailee Goodlett, Salisbury’s MaKayla Noble and West’s Emma Clarke.

Church checked the boxes that often lead to being chosen as a player of the year. She was the county’s leading scorer (16.8 points per game). She also was the best player on the best team.

“We had some great team wins this season,” Church said. “The team wins — like the Northwest Cabarrus game in the South Piedmont Conference Tournament semifinals — always will mean more than games where I scored a lot of points.”

It’s hard to believe but Church is the first female Rowan County Player of the Year from East since 1999 when Nicole Loggins, who was coached by Gina Talbert, was honored for an extraordinary season that ended in the regional.

East has had some great players in this century. But the program’s all-time scoring leader Maggie Rich played in an era when Fields, the county’s all-time scoring leader, was lighting it up for Salisbury. East’s twin towers Karleigh Wike and Kelli Fisher came along when the competition included players such as West Rowan’s Shay Steele, Salisbury’s Brielle Blaire and South Rowan’s Avery Locklear.

So Church ends a long drought for the program.

Church’s high school career began at Gray Stone Day. She scored 205 points as a freshman, so she was viewed as a difference-maker for the Mustangs when she transferred to East for her sophomore year.

But Church missed opening night with pain in her left knee. She scored 21 points in her third game to lead a close win against Lake Norman Charter, but her season was over after nine games. It ended in the Christmas Tournament. The diagnosis from doctors wasn’t pleasant for a girl who has devoted a lot of her life to basketball. Her kneecap was breaking apart.

Church came back amazingly quickly from surgery and intense rehab and led East in scoring with 12.6 points per game as a junior.

Prior to her senior season, Church texted the Post asking how many career points she had. She’s not the first athlete to do that. Her goal obviously was 1,ooo for her career, so the information provided could not have been overly encouraging. She had only scored 80 as a sophomore, so she was still 413 points away from the milestone. She had been very good as a junior and had scored 302, so a 413-point season seemed like a very tall order.

But a super season unfolded for East. In a 28-game season, Church scored in double figures 25 times. She scored 57, including 26 in the championship game, as the Mustangs won the Dale’s Sporting Goods Sam Moir Christmas Classic. She scored 29 in a comeback win at West Davidson that ignited a 10-game winning streak. She scored 30 against Lake Norman Charter and 29 against SPC champ Robinson. East earned extra games by making it to the SPC Tournament championship game and by making the 3A state playoffs.

Church got the 1,000 — and 58 more. She scored 471 points as a senior, one of the all-time best seasons at East. She had the seventh-best scoring season in program history. Maggie Rich scored more than 471 three times. Cristy Earnhardt, Roxie Williams and Loggins scored more one time each.

“Credit my coaches and teammates, you can’t accomplish a goal like that without their help,” Church said. “My knee felt all right, but there’s still some pain at times. I got three or four cortisone shots that helped. But it’s nothing like the pain I felt my sophomore year.”

Church’s career goal is to become a nurse. She was recruited by numerous Division II and III schools. She picked Meredith College. She should be a really good player there as long as she can stay healthy.

Meredith, located in Raleigh, is known as the Avenging Angels. From 2006-10, East Rowan graduate Brittany Cornelius, who competed with a similar style as Church, was a tremendous player for Meredith, scoring 1,468 points and becoming one of the program’s all-time greats.

“I went up there to visit a few times just to make sure it’s where I wanted to be for the next four years,” Church said. “I really like the school and the team, and I love the area.”

East fans only got to experience 2.3 seasons of Church, but they will carry memories of her and her passion for the game a long time. The ambidextrous drives, the wrestling matches for tough rebounds, the bombs from well  beyond the 3-point line. All those things were part of who she is.

When Church arrived, East was coming off a 6-15 season. She will graduate with East back on top of the county.  She leaves the program far better than she found it. That’s the way you want to go out, the way you want to be remembered.

“Mary had a great senior year,” Evans said.  “Whatever we needed her to do, she did it.”