How Westminster Catawba in Rock Hill emerged as a basketball power almost overnight
BY ALEX ZIETLOW ROCK HILL HERALD
DECEMBER 04, 2020 08:05 AM,
He thought it over. Nick wanted to ask his brother, AJ, a question for all of the modestly filled stands to hear. It was a Friday afternoon in November, a few days into the early period for Division I basketball commits to sign National Letters of Intent. AJ had just done his deed, in fact, signing to Charleston Southern — a satisfying milestone on the remarkable journey from sophomore basketball afterthought to senior D1 star — and he was taking questions from anyone who had them.
Nick, a freshman with his own dreams of being a college athlete, eventually asked if his big brother had any advice for him.
AJ wore a big and easy smile and leaned forward into his own mic, which was placed on a table decorated with balloons and basketballs and in front of a Westminster Catawba blue backdrop: “I started taking basketball seriously two years ago, and you see your ability from when you started playing,” he told his brother, showing no sign of discomfort for giving his little sibling a public compliment. “You’re going to be alright.”
That scene on that Friday helped illustrate something interesting that’s been happening in Rock Hill for about a year now.
Sure, the event marked the approaching end of one prep career — the first player ever to sign to play D1 basketball in Westminster Catawba history, in fact. (That isn’t all too surprising, considering that the Christian school in Rock Hill, which has been open since 1981 and has just over 500 students enrolled currently, has had more win-less seasons than win-ning seasons since 2005.)
But in addition to signaling the end of AJ’s career, the event also illustrated the beginning of a lot more: the beginning, that is, of a likely line of high-profile college athletes that’ll soon come through the Westminster Catawba basketball program — one that, in just over a year’s time, has turned into an emerging power headlined by young college prospects and anchored by an accomplished AAU and private school coach.
“I never envisioned we’d be this good of a basketball team this fast,” Ed Addie told The Herald on Thursday. The coach, who’s now in his second season at the helm, led WCCS to more wins last year alone than the school had in the five years before it combined. “I thought it would take a little bit longer. But it basically happened overnight. Literally, overnight.”
This weekend, WCCS is playing in a premiere event in Battle at the Rock. The basketball showcase with a national audience will be held for the first time in the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, the multimillion dollar facility that hosted numerous youth sports events this summer, including the robust AAU basketball tournaments that many Westminster Catawba players hooped in.
“What we look for in teams we want to bring to Battle at the Rock is either teams who are perennial state champions, or who compete on a national level, or who have top players across the country,” Billy Dunlap, the CEO of Visit York County and a lead organizer in the event, told The Herald. “And Jahseem Felton, arguably the top player in his class, in the country, that makes them attractive to us.
“And the fact that they’re local adds to it as well. Coach Addie has built a great program there in such a short amount of time.”
From the outside looking in, it’s easy to think that this sort of transformation was inevitable once Addie was hired.
After all, Addie has turned programs around before: In his one year at Charlotte’s Kennedy Charter in 2011-12, for instance, Addie took a struggling program and went 30-3 in a matter of months — his team boasting five future D1 players and averaging a nation-leading 96 points per game in the process, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
But Addie’s journey coming to Westminster Catawba, as well as the rise of the program, was quite serendipitous, he said. It was the kind of sequence that offers a glimpse into the ever-shifting ecosystem that is youth basketball.
Here’s the short of it: In the early months of 2019, Addie was an assistant coach at Gaston Day, a private school in the Charlotte area that his son, Kenyon, attended at the time. Addie had heard of Westminster Catawba. (The Indians were a team Gaston Day would regularly beat like a drum, to the tune of 30 or 40 points.) But he didn’t know where the school was or anything of value about it.
After one game, Addie said, a parent whose son played for Addie on one of his Team Loaded NC teams approached Addie and asked him if he’d be interested in taking the WCCS job. And although the 20-plus year coach didn’t have any real interest, he entertained the earnest parent and allowed his phone number to be sent on to Westminster Catawba’s then-athletic director, Tim Early.
After a meeting with Early, Addie was still unconvinced. But he agreed to have his son tour the school. And Kenyon fell in love with it. Addie prayed about it, and in February 2019, he became WCCS’s ninth coach in almost as many years.
After an article ran in The Observer about his new job, Addie said, his phone started blowing up. Several parents and players and others Addie knew in all sorts of ways inquired about the school that no one seemed to know much about. One of those guys was Jahseem Felton. He was then a 6-3, 175-pound point guard and one of the most sought-after rising eighth graders in the country who lived in the Charlotte area. Felton was, and still is, considered the No. 1 Class of 2024 prospect in the country.
Addie knew Felton and his family through a variety of connections: His son and Felton were the same age and competed on the AAU circuit against each other, and one of Addie’s assistants, Erik Whaley, trained Felton, too. When word got out about Addie moving south of the Carolinas border, Felton’s father confirmed with Whaley that Addie was really taking the job.
Then, after a few conversations and a school tour and a submitted and accepted application, Addie remembered seeing Felton in the WCCS hallway on the first day of school and shaking his head: “Wow,” he recalled saying to himself, “this really happened.”
Westminster Catawba’s rise has been understandably jarring. It’s on the map now, so to speak, after years of many not knowing it existed.
Other important players came along before and after Felton’s arrival, too — spreading the program’s hype further:
▪ Enter Hamrick (6-8 wing) and Lucas Heckaman (6-6 wing transfer from Nation Ford in Fort Mill), the two biggest guys on a team that is now used to playing five perimeter players at a time.
▪ Enter MJ Collins, a senior scoring guard who transferred in this year from Northside Christian.
▪ Enter Asil Hoyle, the guy Addie calls his “primary point guard.”
And whether because it is a school that competes in 2A of the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association (NCISAA) and has mostly kids from Charlotte on its roster — or because a core group of its players transferred in when they were in middle school or before they were household names at their public schools — Westminster Catawba has grown immensely in stature without alienating its surrounding community.
That has been a largely unseen but delicate task that Addie, someone who’s uniquely successful in both AAU and high school coaching spheres, has thrived in.
“I think the biggest thing is having a mutual respect for the community and the culture at other schools,” Addie said. “For me, coaching AAU for so long, I’ve developed a really good rapport with high schools… Most of the coaches know me, and they know I don’t go after kids or try to recruit them to leave their school and come to mine.”
He added: “I think the biggest reason why I haven’t alienated the community and other coaches is because I just have the reputation of doing things the right way.”
WCCS, a 2A school, is slated to play last year’s 4A NCISSA state champion, Cannon School, on Saturday at 3 p.m.
The game marks another large stage for WCCS, another set of fans for Westminster Catawba to be in front of.
Said Addie: “By word of mouth, it just continues to build. And we’ll just continue to get better and better.”
BY ALEX ZIETLOW ROCK HILL HERALD
DECEMBER 04, 2020 08:05 AM,
- ROCK HILL
He thought it over. Nick wanted to ask his brother, AJ, a question for all of the modestly filled stands to hear. It was a Friday afternoon in November, a few days into the early period for Division I basketball commits to sign National Letters of Intent. AJ had just done his deed, in fact, signing to Charleston Southern — a satisfying milestone on the remarkable journey from sophomore basketball afterthought to senior D1 star — and he was taking questions from anyone who had them.
Nick, a freshman with his own dreams of being a college athlete, eventually asked if his big brother had any advice for him.
AJ wore a big and easy smile and leaned forward into his own mic, which was placed on a table decorated with balloons and basketballs and in front of a Westminster Catawba blue backdrop: “I started taking basketball seriously two years ago, and you see your ability from when you started playing,” he told his brother, showing no sign of discomfort for giving his little sibling a public compliment. “You’re going to be alright.”
That scene on that Friday helped illustrate something interesting that’s been happening in Rock Hill for about a year now.
Sure, the event marked the approaching end of one prep career — the first player ever to sign to play D1 basketball in Westminster Catawba history, in fact. (That isn’t all too surprising, considering that the Christian school in Rock Hill, which has been open since 1981 and has just over 500 students enrolled currently, has had more win-less seasons than win-ning seasons since 2005.)
But in addition to signaling the end of AJ’s career, the event also illustrated the beginning of a lot more: the beginning, that is, of a likely line of high-profile college athletes that’ll soon come through the Westminster Catawba basketball program — one that, in just over a year’s time, has turned into an emerging power headlined by young college prospects and anchored by an accomplished AAU and private school coach.
“I never envisioned we’d be this good of a basketball team this fast,” Ed Addie told The Herald on Thursday. The coach, who’s now in his second season at the helm, led WCCS to more wins last year alone than the school had in the five years before it combined. “I thought it would take a little bit longer. But it basically happened overnight. Literally, overnight.”
This weekend, WCCS is playing in a premiere event in Battle at the Rock. The basketball showcase with a national audience will be held for the first time in the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, the multimillion dollar facility that hosted numerous youth sports events this summer, including the robust AAU basketball tournaments that many Westminster Catawba players hooped in.
“What we look for in teams we want to bring to Battle at the Rock is either teams who are perennial state champions, or who compete on a national level, or who have top players across the country,” Billy Dunlap, the CEO of Visit York County and a lead organizer in the event, told The Herald. “And Jahseem Felton, arguably the top player in his class, in the country, that makes them attractive to us.
“And the fact that they’re local adds to it as well. Coach Addie has built a great program there in such a short amount of time.”
From the outside looking in, it’s easy to think that this sort of transformation was inevitable once Addie was hired.
After all, Addie has turned programs around before: In his one year at Charlotte’s Kennedy Charter in 2011-12, for instance, Addie took a struggling program and went 30-3 in a matter of months — his team boasting five future D1 players and averaging a nation-leading 96 points per game in the process, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
But Addie’s journey coming to Westminster Catawba, as well as the rise of the program, was quite serendipitous, he said. It was the kind of sequence that offers a glimpse into the ever-shifting ecosystem that is youth basketball.
Here’s the short of it: In the early months of 2019, Addie was an assistant coach at Gaston Day, a private school in the Charlotte area that his son, Kenyon, attended at the time. Addie had heard of Westminster Catawba. (The Indians were a team Gaston Day would regularly beat like a drum, to the tune of 30 or 40 points.) But he didn’t know where the school was or anything of value about it.
After one game, Addie said, a parent whose son played for Addie on one of his Team Loaded NC teams approached Addie and asked him if he’d be interested in taking the WCCS job. And although the 20-plus year coach didn’t have any real interest, he entertained the earnest parent and allowed his phone number to be sent on to Westminster Catawba’s then-athletic director, Tim Early.
After a meeting with Early, Addie was still unconvinced. But he agreed to have his son tour the school. And Kenyon fell in love with it. Addie prayed about it, and in February 2019, he became WCCS’s ninth coach in almost as many years.
After an article ran in The Observer about his new job, Addie said, his phone started blowing up. Several parents and players and others Addie knew in all sorts of ways inquired about the school that no one seemed to know much about. One of those guys was Jahseem Felton. He was then a 6-3, 175-pound point guard and one of the most sought-after rising eighth graders in the country who lived in the Charlotte area. Felton was, and still is, considered the No. 1 Class of 2024 prospect in the country.
Addie knew Felton and his family through a variety of connections: His son and Felton were the same age and competed on the AAU circuit against each other, and one of Addie’s assistants, Erik Whaley, trained Felton, too. When word got out about Addie moving south of the Carolinas border, Felton’s father confirmed with Whaley that Addie was really taking the job.
Then, after a few conversations and a school tour and a submitted and accepted application, Addie remembered seeing Felton in the WCCS hallway on the first day of school and shaking his head: “Wow,” he recalled saying to himself, “this really happened.”
Westminster Catawba’s rise has been understandably jarring. It’s on the map now, so to speak, after years of many not knowing it existed.
Other important players came along before and after Felton’s arrival, too — spreading the program’s hype further:
▪ Enter Hamrick (6-8 wing) and Lucas Heckaman (6-6 wing transfer from Nation Ford in Fort Mill), the two biggest guys on a team that is now used to playing five perimeter players at a time.
▪ Enter MJ Collins, a senior scoring guard who transferred in this year from Northside Christian.
▪ Enter Asil Hoyle, the guy Addie calls his “primary point guard.”
And whether because it is a school that competes in 2A of the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association (NCISAA) and has mostly kids from Charlotte on its roster — or because a core group of its players transferred in when they were in middle school or before they were household names at their public schools — Westminster Catawba has grown immensely in stature without alienating its surrounding community.
That has been a largely unseen but delicate task that Addie, someone who’s uniquely successful in both AAU and high school coaching spheres, has thrived in.
“I think the biggest thing is having a mutual respect for the community and the culture at other schools,” Addie said. “For me, coaching AAU for so long, I’ve developed a really good rapport with high schools… Most of the coaches know me, and they know I don’t go after kids or try to recruit them to leave their school and come to mine.”
He added: “I think the biggest reason why I haven’t alienated the community and other coaches is because I just have the reputation of doing things the right way.”
WCCS, a 2A school, is slated to play last year’s 4A NCISSA state champion, Cannon School, on Saturday at 3 p.m.
The game marks another large stage for WCCS, another set of fans for Westminster Catawba to be in front of.
Said Addie: “By word of mouth, it just continues to build. And we’ll just continue to get better and better.”
