By Mike London
mlondon@salisburypost.com
The highest-profile athletes in West Rowan’s junior class are quarterback B.J. Sherrill and cornerback Domonique Noble.
A role model for the first cousins, who are more like brothers, is their grandfather, John Noble III, who toiled in the trenches for East Spencer’s Dunbar High in the days of segregation.
Noble has helped instill in his grandsons a host of positive traits. They’ll be more than college athletes. They’ll be college graduates.
“I’ve always stressed grades first and sports second,” Noble said. “I am extremely proud of both. I like to think my athleticism rubbed off on them. I was dedicated to sports. Maybe they inherited that gene.”
Noble’s grandsons have helped West win 20 in a row. The 210-pound Sherrill is the county’s top passer, and 6-foot-2 Domonique Noble is an athletic shutdown corner with two interceptions.
Noble’s list of grandchildren also includes Rashonda Mayfield, a 1,000-point scorer for West’s girls basketball program; all-county John Noble, who anchored West’s offensive line in 2007; and the kid, Rashad Sherrill, a stocky freshman nose guard for West’s jayvee team.
While Noble hates to miss a West football or basketball game ó his grandsons are also strong in hoops ó his roots, his heart and his home remain in East Spencer.
His love for athletics came to him mostly through his uncle, James Archie, who played ball for Livingstone.
“My parents were strict, so I had a choice to make,” Noble said. “It was either stay at home with them or get involved in athletics. I didn’t want to stay home.”
As a junior in the 1963-64 school year, Noble started on one of the great basketball teams in Dunbar history. He averaged 8.1 points playing for coach Harry Koontz and playing with Nathaniel Davis, Roy Goodlett and brothers Romus and Louis Jefferies.
The Tigers were 19-2 and finished third in the state.
Noble’s senior football season in 1964 was equally memorable. It was the culmination of a building process begun by coach James Pemberton, who had revived the sport at Dunbar. It didn’t compete in football from 1939-1960.
Dunbar was small ó Noble estimates 80 or so students in graduating classes ó but Pemberton put a team on the field in 1961, proudly wearing blue and white jerseys under the lights in a brand new stadium.
“I thought Coach Pemberton did one heck of a job,” Noble said. “He was a mild-mannered man, but when he spoke, he meant business. He didn’t care how good you were ó if you didn’t follow his rules, you were gone. We lost a few guys at practice. They’d just walk away.”
Noble was a freshman on that 1961 team. Dunbar won one game. It beat Troy’s Peabody High.
When Noble was a sophomore, Dunbar won four times. The Tigers were 6-3 his junior year.
When Noble’s senior year began, the Tigers knew they had a powerhouse. Practices were rough and conducted without water.
“I’d hold a blocking dummy out in front of me, and a teammate would get a running start and try to knock me straight to kingdom come,” Noble said.
Noble and Eugene Neal were big men for the time, checking in at close to 215 pounds. They were the tackles who opened the holes on offense ó the Tigers used the Wing-T and Pro-T formations ó and stuffed the run on defense.
“If you played, you played both ways, so you had to be in excellent shape,” Noble said.
Dunbar’s speed backs were David Washington and Lonnie Sifford, both of whom are deceased, but Noble remains friends to this day with fullback Calvin Jackson and quarterback Wayne Lanear.
“Guys on that team could play today,” Noble said. “Washington and Sifford were so fast. You talk about broken-field running. Once they got through the line, they were gone. Jackson was all power. If you didn’t get him by the ankles, you couldn’t bring him down.”
Dunbar was stout defensively. The Tigers allowed just one TD in their first three outings, overpowering Belmont, Monroe and Statesville. The only regular-season loss was a nonconference matchup against Lexington.
“We could’ve done better in that one, but Coach had us run just basic plays,” Noble said. “We were being scouted. He he didn’t want teams to know what we had.”
Dunbar clinched the conference title with a 35-6 bruiser against Mount Airy. It was homecoming. The Tigers celebrated by forcing three turnovers and holding Mount Airy to 77 yards.
“We had to earn it,” Noble said. “I remember that one because we kept getting penalties. It wasn’t me getting them, but Coach thought it was, and he was yelling at me.”
The final game of the regular season was against Salisbury J.C. Price, Dunbar’s big rival. Dunbar had never beaten the Red Devils.
“There was always a lot of intensity to the Price game,” Noble said. “The crowd was pumped up.”
Dunbar won with relative ease on its home field, beating the Red Devils 30-6. Price was stopped cold for minus-7 rushing yards.
Noble joined in the scoring when he tackled a Price back in the end zone for a safety. He believes it was Dewey Randall.
That victory over Price gave the Tigers an 8-1 record.
Next was Hickory Ridgeview, a juggernaut Dunbar tackled at Dunbar Stadium on Nov. 20 in a contest for the Western North Carolina 2A championship for black schools.
The Ridgeview Panthers were the Independence of black high school ball, winning 74 straight regular-season games from 1957-1965 and posting 14 straight shutouts. Ridgeview blanked Dunbar 28-0 for one of those 14.
It was 20-0 at halftime, but the Tigers held Ridgeview’s offense to negative yards in the second half.
“At first, we just couldn’t believe how big they were,” Noble said. “Maybe guys were nervous. It seems like we fumbled a lot in the first half. At halftime, we regrouped and played a lot better.”
Noble and Neal were instrumental in that stellar season. Pemberton told the Post his two tackles “could play for any football team in the state.”
After he graduated as part of Dunbar’s class of 1965, Noble had offers to continue his football career at Livingstone, North Carolina A&T or Johnson C. Smith, but he elected to go to Shaw. He wanted to go into the law enforcement field, and Shaw offered a major in criminal justice.
By the time he graduated college, the South was changing with full integration of schools. In the spring of 1969, Dunbar and Price ended their run as high schools and ended an era.
Noble had put in an application to the local sheriff’s department, but he hadn’t been hired and was employed by the fire department. When schools opened in the fall of 1969, there was immediate tension. He was pressed into service.
“They came and asked if I still wanted to be a sheriff’s deputy, and I said I did because it paid more than the fire department,” Noble said. “They got my clothing size and told me to report the next morning. They needed black representation in the schools. My first day, there was fighting at South. Next day, there’s a fight at North.”
He spent his first weeks on duty as a presence in high school hallways to deter violence as students changed classes. Things gradually settled. Athletic teams mixed and learned they could get along.
For Noble, those first tense days with the sheriff’s department blossomed into a 30-year career.
“You put in 10 years, and then you say why not another 10, and then it’s just 10 more to retirement,” he said with a smile.
He’s gone from police work to politics. He’s still working and is thankful his daughters, Deedre and Angela, produced grandchildren who share his passion for education and sports.