Rowan legends: Lu starred in 3 sports, has coached for 44 seasons

Rowan legends: Lu starred in 3 sports, has coached for 44 seasons Published 6:11 pm Friday, June 26, 2026 Signing with UNC, 1977.

Lu congratulates state champ Rebeka Frick, 1993.

By Mike London Salisbury Post FAITH Lu Gamewell remembers the first race she ever competed in.

She was Lu Holshouser then and was a new member of the Faith Flyers, the youth track team organized by Salisbury Post assistant sports editor and track enthusiast Ed Dupree in 1974.

Lu became the oldest girl on the team when she signed up, the first teenage girl to compete for the Flyers.

She had joined the club because two of her younger sisters were running and having a great time.

Dupree drove the Flyers everywhere in his station wagon, and he entered Lu in the 880-yard run in a meet held at NC State.

Were in the middle of my first race when it starts pouring rain, the bleachers empty out, and the only ones left in the stadium are the runners in the event, Lu said.

Well, theres one other person whos still at the meet.

Ed Dupree is standing at the finish line.

Hes waiting for me, holding his stop watch.

Lus times on Duprees stop watch were good, but she was far better in the discus.

A fantastic all-round athlete at East Rowan in the 1970s, she was the first girl in Rowan County to sling the discus more than 100 feet.

She would set school records that have stood for 50 years.

UNC was just getting its womens track and field efforts off the ground in 1977, the same year Lu graduated from East, and Lu became the first athlete to sign with the Tar Heels new program.

She threw the discus for the Heels and was taught how to throw the javelin, a brand new sport for her, by a teammate from Venezuela.

Lu had the strong arm for it and picked it up quickly.

Signing first with UNC track wasnt the first time in her life Lu had been first in line.

In the summer of 1969, she became the first girl to play Little League baseball in Rowan County.

Girls werent allowed to do much in athletics in 1969, Lu said.

Sports were still a boys world.

The Little League rule book specifically banned girls from playing, but my coaches went to bat for me.

They went to the league meeting and told them they had a girl who was good and she was going to play.

And so I played.

She opened the door for a lot of girls who followed her.

Lu played three years for the Faith Yankees, at first in right field, but later moving to first base.

She was a Little League All-Star in 1971 when she was 12.

I know I led the league in being hit by pitches the most, Lu said.

They asked a boy why he hit me and he said that he hit me because that was better than having a girl get a hit off him.

When she arrived at Erwin Junior High, they didnt have a track team yet.

Basketball and slow-pitch softball were the only sports offered for girls.

But she arrived at East as a sophomore at a time when girls sports were starting to ramp up in North Carolina high schools.

Title IX had been enacted in 1972, giving women equal access (legally, at least) to sports participation.

East had its first girls track team my sophomore year (1975), Lu said.

Also the schools first softball team.

Parents who wanted their girls to have a chance to play helped buy equipment.

Our uniforms might be only a T-shirt from Granite Knitwear, but we didnt care.

We were just glad to be playing.

Lu believes softball, which she played for coach Judy McLendon, was her best sport, but she also excelled for coach Jesse Watsons Mustangs in basketball, and in track and field, where assistant coach Oron Earnhardt was helping her reach PRs that no one had thought possible for a girl in the throws.

Lu was Junior Olympics state champ in the discus and was second in a six-state regional.

She placed 12th nationally.

She was North Piedmont Conference Player of the Year in softball in 1976 and 1977 and NPC Player of the Year for track and field in 1977.

She was Rowan County Female Athlete of the Year for the 1976-77 school year.

Really proud of that, Lu said.

There were some great athletes in the county.

Lu was still in the ninth grade at Erwin when East won the 1973-74 WNCHSAA championship, the only girls basketball title won by any Rowan team in the WNCHSAA era.

Ninth grade was still junior high, so I missed out on that season, but I did get to play with most of those girls over the next few years, Lu said.

It was a thrill to play for Coach Watson and to walk out on the court with players like Cristy Earnhardt and Kathy Sapp.

As a sophomore, in the 1974-75 season, Lu got to play with both of those future ACC performers on a 24-3 team that went 19-1 in the NPC.

Lu was second team all-county.

She was Easts No.

2 scorer behind Sapp on a 22-5 team in 1975-76.

That was the East team that won the first girls Christmas tournament at Catawba.

Lu was first team all-county and all-conference in 1976 and again in 1977.

Coach Watson was mild-mannered, so when he raised his voice it got your attention, Lu said.

The games with Davie County and with North Stanly were almost always knock down-drag out battles.

I can still remember the noise in those packed gyms.

I remember we were playing Davie and had a terrible first half.

When Coach Watson walked into the locker room and kicked over a trash can, we knew wed let him down.

We needed to play better and we did.

As a senior, Lu was the leading scorer for East with 13.7 points per game and led the Mustangs to a 15-9 record.

Her senior year was the farewell season for the WNCHSAA, and Lu played in the WNCHSAAs last all-star game that pitted the SPC and NPC stars against the standouts from the two western conferences.

Lu had six points and eight rebounds.

She scored 815 career pointsa t East.

She was second behind Earnhardt on the schools all-time scoring list when she graduated.

While there was a long history of WNCHSAA track and field championship meets for boys, there was only one held for girls.

That was the last event staged in the WNCHSAA in the spring of 1977.

East had a powerful team led by Lu, Kim Fisher, Marilyn Lowe and Shirley Corpening.

The Mustangs broke five county records and won four events in that meet, but North Gaston had the same two outstanding athletes who made the school a powerhouse in basketball Pfeiffer recruit Nancy Scoggins and Lenoir-Rhyne signee Donna Elrod.

They edged the Mustangs 78-76 for the title.

In her final high school meet, Holshouser threw the discus 118 feet, 4 inches, breaking the county record she had set earlier in the season.

Lowe threw better than 36 feet and won the shot put.

Fisher broke the county record in the mile (5:23) and also won the 880.

Corpening ran 16.33 to win the 110-yard low hurdles and broke another county record.

We came so close, Lu said.

I hate we only had that one chance to win the WNCHSAA.

Lu would like to have played softball in college, but there were few scholarships available for softball.

Since she was coming to Chapel Hill for track, UNCs basketball coach, Angela Lumpkin, who had only two scholarships for her program.

encouraged Lu to walk on to the basketball team, but there was a coaching change before she got to Chapel Hill, with Jennifer Alley replacing Lumpkin.

I played on the UNC jayvee basketball team when I was a freshman, but when they decided to start an indoor track program, that was the end of basketball, Lu said.

She won some meets for the Tar Heels and set the early discus standards for the program.

She competed for for four years.

After graduation, she came back to Rowan County, but P.E.

and coaching jobs were in short supply.

Her first job with the school system was as a teacher assistant and bus driver at Faith Elementary.

She got her foot in the coaching door at China Grove Junior High when a teacher was out on maternity leave.

She stayed there five years, teaching science and health and coaching softball, basketball and track.

When W.A.

Cline returned to East for his second stint in 1987, a priority for him was getting Lu back to East.

He did.

She taught P.E., health, aerobics, weightlifting and team sports.

She spent 10 years coaching East jayvee basketball and assisting the varsity.

She coached track at East for 27 seasons.

She coached three individual NCHSAA state champs.

She coached Rebekah Frick, who won the1600 and 3200 in 1993 and coached discus champions Jordan Huffman (2004) and Rachel Karriker (2005).

She coached seven Mustang teams to conference championships in track and field and was voted coach of the year five times in the SPC and twice in the NPC.

Her 1995 team won a regional championship.

Those girls who won state championships provided great memories for me, and I was very proud of my time as Easts track coach because East became a place where premiere track meets were held, Lu said.

W.A.

Cline and Aaron Neely taught me a lot about running meets and I directed some big ones and served as starter for running events.

Lu reached 30 years with the school system in 2012 and retired, but her coaching career has continued over the last 14 years.

She coached at Southeast Middle when her daughter Nancy Gamewell, a good volleyball player, was coming through on her way to Carson.

She was an assistant coach at Carson in 2021 when the Cougars won a state championship in girls basketball, and she continues to assist there.

Thats 44 years of coaching, but she hasnt gotten tired of it.

Shes 67 now, but in some ways, shes still that same girl who wanted to climb trees, chase cats on to rooftops and play Little League baseball with the boys.

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