Renee Campbell picked up the phone in the West Rowan High School office.
She answered a question or two as her eyes got wider and wider. Then, she scurried into the office of principal Henry Kluttz.
As Kluttz remembers it, this is how the conversation went.
Renee: “Dean Smith is on the phone! He wants to talk to you!”
Kluttz: “What line is he on?”
Renee: “Why does he want to talk to you?”
Kluttz: “Renee, what line is he on?”
Renee: “It’s Dean Smith! I know that voice!”
Kluttz: “W-H-A-T L-I-N-E, R-E-N-E-E?”
Renee: “But why does he want to talk to you?”
Kluttz didn’t blow his top because he knows exactly who Renee Campbell is and knows what her favorite color is.
“She bleeds Carolina Blue,” he smiled.
“By the time I got off the phone, she had called her husband, her brother, her dad and everyone else in the neighborhood.”
“My son was born in Chapel Hill,”Campbell explains. “My husband graduated in Chapel Hill. We’re major, major Carolina.”
With all of that said, there is just one more question to answer.
Why was Dean Smith calling Henry Kluttz?
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Maybe it’s only appropriate that Mike Gurley will be coaching in the Dean E. Smith Center Saturday night.
It was a recommendation from Michelangelo himself that got Gurley the coveted job as West Rowan boys basketball coach.
Kluttz explains that when Bobby Shipwash left after his state title team in 1997, Kluttz wanted a proven winner to follow Jack Lytton, Charles Hellard and Shipwash. His sights were set on Gurley.
“We played against Mike and I saw how he operated,” Kluttz said.
Still, he called the North Carolina High School Athletic Association for advice. He was told to get in touch with Atlantic Coast Conference coaches like Smith at Carolina or Dave Odom at Wake Forest.
He called Smith’s secretary Angela Lee and asked if one of the coaches could call. So he was almost as surprised as Campbell when the man himself was on the other end of the phone.
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Smith mentioned a guy in Virginia Beach and another in South Carolina. Then, he asked Kluttz if he had anyone in mind.
“I told him I liked the guy in Lexington,” Kluttz recalled.
Smith immediately began gushing praise Gurley’s way. He told Kluttz, “I don’t think you can go wrong. He has a reputation in the classroom and a reputation on the floor. He’s a family fan.”
By this time, Kluttz was almost as wide-eyed as his secretary.
“I knew those things,” he said. “I was surprised Coach Smith knew those things.”
Smith told Kluttz he keeps a close watch on prep sports in the state.
“What’s good for high school is good for the University of North Carolina,” he told Kluttz.
“That made me fall in love with his attitude and his character,” Kluttz said of Smith.
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But there was still the job of luring Gurley away from his players in the Barbecue City. The West Rowan pitchman obviously said the right things.
“A lot of people say, ‘Hey, you came to West Rowan because of Scooter Sherrill,’ ” laughs Gurley. “But it was because of Henry Kluttz. Henry made me feel wanted. I wasn’t looking for the job but I don’t know why I got so lucky that he was looking for me.”
Now, 147 games after Kluttz’s decision, Gurley has coached West to 131 wins against a measly16 defeats.
Thanks, Deano.
You can bet if Gurley leaves for bigger and better things one day, Kluttz has some good advice for the next principal at West Rowan.
Call the coach at the University of North Carolina — but tell him to call you at home.
If he calls the school and the secretary answers, he may never get through.
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Contact Ronnie Gallagher at 704-797-4287 or rgallagher@salisburypost.com
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