Carr comes home to Catawba

The painful memories hit Donna Carr with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer every time she walks into Goodman Gymnasium.

Carr will be a senior post player for coach John Duncan’s Catawba Indians this season, but the memories that won’t go away are from her senior year at Salisbury High School in 1995.

Go back to ‘95 with her.

Carr is a thin but springy 6-footer with a soft voice and a softer touch. The leading scorer in Hornet history — totalling nearly 500 more points than previous record-holder Gerry Spain — she dominates, averaging 18.9 ppg in 1994-95. She scores a school-record 38 against West Montgomery, more points than even Bobby Jackson ever scored in a single night.

Carr leads her team in scoring for the fourth straight time, and best of all, for the first time, she leads a winner. After going 30-41 her first three years, Carr’s final team catches fire. It starts out 1-3, but then coach De Batchelor finds the pieces to put around her star. Track star Carmen Weldon emerges as a point guard. Devina Dixon, best-shooting homecoming queen in history, scores big. Tanya Moss, Ashley Boulware, Quisha Wesley and the Howard twins, Alicia and Allison, play their roles.

The Hornets win the Christmas Tournament at Goodman, beating North, East and South. The final with the Raiders is 53-51 with Carr’s long arms disrupting a final shot by South’s Jill Cress that would have tied it.

Suddenly, the Hornets win 22 of 23 games, go 13-1 to win the Yadkin Valley Conference title and are hailed as the best team in school history. The one loss after Christmas is to Albemarle (56-50), but the Hornets pound the Bulldogs in the rematch and again in the finals of the YVCTournament. With three of the top 10 scorers in school annals, the Hornets are thinking 2A state title.

But it all slips away in a sectional final at Goodman Gym against Ledford. Dixon, injured in the opener of the YVC tourney against North, watches on crutches. Weldon fouls out. Then Carr pulls up lame — “right at the turning point,” as she remembers — and is hobbled the rest of the game. She scores 20, but the Hornets lose by 10. And high school is history.

Carr still remembers the tears that flowed in that chilly basement as she shed that Hornet uniform for the last time and limped up the stairs. It’s sad, yet understandable. Long after she’s forgotten all her 20-point nights on that Goodman floor, the echo of that last loss is the one recollection that still bangs around in her head.

And that, she says, is the biggest reason she’s returned home. Back to Catawba, in search of the championship she didn’t get in high school.

“My fingers are kind of bare right now,” says Carr, extending her empty hands for all to see. “All I want to do in basketball is cut down a net. I’ve never cut down a net. Not one. Every day at practice, I’m asking someone, ‘What do we have to win to cut down a net? Sectional? Regional? What?’ ”

Carr sounds like someone who’s been shopping at Bracketville. She’s got the ladder and the scissors — and the jumper. Now, will someone please just direct her toward the aisle with the nets.

Much of the world recruited Carr in ‘95. She considered staying at home — even went to see Catawba play a few times — but the big schools were after her and her friends and family counseled her that the world was wider than Rowan County and the opportunities were too great to pass up.

South Carolina offered a scholarship and that meant the chance to play in the SEC — the mecca of women’s college hoops. And the chance to measure herself against the very best.

“Playing against the ESPNgirls and the people on the Reebok covers,” she says. “Playing against Tennessee and people like that was a great experience. I respected them and they respected me.”

Carr was a starter for the Gamecocks and did fine. She was among the top 10 rebounders in the conference as a junior. But South Carolina didn’t win all that often.

“I enjoyed my time there,” she said. “But you take such a beating mentally when you lose.”

She also took a beating physically, playing inside in the SEC against 6-foot-5 players every night.

With one season of eligibility left, Carr needed a change of scenery. Then one day, she found herself on the phone with Duncan. And then she decided the time was right to return home.

“WhenI was a kid, it was always Catawba,” she said. “I was at all the camps — had all the T-shirts. Salisbury’s given me a lot. I’ve got one year left. I want to give something back.”

Carr said friends and family (she’s related to both East Rowan phenom Cal Hayes Jr. and Western Carolina’s Janetta Heggins, by the way) were overjoyed at the news.

“So many phone calls,” Carr smiles. “People found out I was back and there were all these flowers and balloons. It makes you feel good inside.”

Carr, who’s studying business and sociology, enrolled at Catawba last year. She visited Goodman often, stared at the hanging nets and let the memories flow back. And now she’s ready to return to the court.

She says fans will notice a more mature, more aggressive Donna — a player who can score further from the rim than in high school.

“Donna’s a difference-maker,” said Duncan, whose team is one of the SAC favorites. “She leaps great, can defend and has the experience.”

Carr, who scored 11 points and yanked down seven rebounds in Catawba’s first exhibition, says her new Indian teammates are talented.

“The talent here isn’t much different from Division I,” she said. “We’re going to be exciting. Best of all, I’ll be able to look in the crowd and see faces I know. I can’t wait.”

Mostly she can’t wait to finish her career at Goodman with memories that bring tears of joy — not pain. And to cover one of those fingers with a ring.

And, with a little luck, to cut down a net.