By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

MOUNT ULLA —West Rowan guard Kayvone Norman’s senior statistical averages — 6.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists — may not sound impressive, but you have to remember he was competing in the South Piedmont Conference on one leg.

Pfeiffer University coaches have seen what Norman can do when he’s healthy, so they stuck with him through thick and thin. Norman, who had surgery last week to repair a football knee injury, recently announced a commitment to Pfeiffer’s hoops program.

“Pfeiffer still wanted me, when some other schools stopped calling, and you go where you’re wanted,” Norman said. “Pfeiffer has shown me they care about me as a person for a long time.”

Norman has an interesting story to tell. He was a New Yorker not that long ago.

“The COVID pandemic had shut everything down in New York in 2020,” Norman said. “My family felt there would be more opportunity in the South, and we moved. I enrolled at West Rowan in October of my freshman year.”

The sudden arrival at West of a New York youngster who was a sturdily built basketball player caused a stir because hoops is a big deal in Mount Ulla. Norman got into a few varsity games in a delayed season as a freshman and began to make a serious impact on the court as a varsity sophomore. That’s when Pfeiffer saw him for the first time.

Norman didn’t have much of a football background, but at 5-foot-10, 190 pounds, he looks like a football player. West coaches talked him into giving football a try in the fall of his junior year, and he made a difference as a running back. He ran over some people, put the smash in smash-mouth. He rushed 74 times for 375 yards and four touchdowns in a backup role, with 14 carries for 110 yards and a TD coming in the playoff shootout with West Henderson that ended West Rowan’s season.

“Football came to me quickly,” Norman said. “I was naturally strong, and I’d added to it with some weightlifting.”

Norman had a solid junior basketball season as a pass-first point guard. He averaged 8.9 points, but he could pick it up when the adrenaline got going in the county games. He scored 22 against East Rowan, 19 against North Rowan, 20 and 17 against his favorite team to play against — Carson.

“Pfeiffer had come to watch him practice and play and we also went to a Pfeiffer team camp,” West coach Dadrian Cuthbertson said. “Pfeiffer always liked him. They liked his toughness and felt like he’d be a good fit for them.”

As his senior year was getting started, Norman encountered a serious roadblock. West Rowan’s football staff had planned for him to be the primary running back inn 2023 (no one realized yet how explosive Jaylen Neely was going to be), but Norman blew out a knee in practice.

“Torn ACL, torn MCL, sprained PCL,” Norman said. “It was a major setback.”

Norman’s high school football career was over and it was assumed that his basketball days in a West Rowan uniform also were finished.

But Norman wasn’t going to give up that easily. Surgery would’ve officially finished him, so he delayed the surgery until after the basketball season.

“Well, you only get one senior year,” Norman explained. “If there was any way I could play on the knee, I was going to play basketball. I made that decision by September. I started rehabbing and running, I’d run a mile, just seeing how much pain there was going to be. I tested my limits to see what I could do. I believed I could play.”

He was in the gym when West’s basketball season got started. He wasn’t quite the player he had been as a junior, had to rely more on strength and cunning and less on speed, but he helped West be competitive.

“Every game was definitely a battle for me,” Norman said. “But I was mentally strong and fought through it. I’m happy that I played and I feel blessed that I was able to play.”

The Falcons were 12-12, beat a good Carson three times and made the 3A state playoffs.

“Kayvone is very tough, one of the toughest guys I’ve ever coached — he’s got that New York toughness about him,” Cuthbertson said. “He was a good leader for us, a coach on the floor, a competitor who stayed on our young guys to always play hard. If he’d been healthy, I believe he would’ve averaged double figures easy, 12 to 15 points per game. Once he’s focused on basketball and once he’s fully healthy and in basketball shape, he can be very good at Pfeiffer.”

Norman said he was behind academically when he first arrived at West and there were curriculum adjustments to make and some catching up to do, but he became a solid student. He plans a business major at Pfeiffer.

“There are a lot of different routes you can go in life with a business degree,” he said. “A business degree means options.”

His long-delayed knee surgery took place last week. There were some positives. The ACL was only partially torn, not a full tear, and it actually had healed some, had gotten stronger, through the rigors of the basketball season. Most of the work by physicians was treating the MCL.

“I’m walking now,” Norman said cheerfully. “Give me a month, and I’ll be running.”

He may redshirt his freshman year, but you get the feeling that he won’t rest until he’s on the floor as a college player at Pfeiffer’s Merner Gym.