Staff report

Starting with the 2022-23 season, the plan is for Rowan County basketball players to receive a tangible award.

Hopefully, this trophy/plaque will be something they can show their kids and grand-kids one day. It will be something they can feel and touch.

The sponsors providing the awards are (Darren) Ramsey Dental and DJZ Video. The Player of the Year award for Rowan County boys basketball will be known as the Scooter Sherrill Award, while the Player of the Year award for Rowan County girls will be the Shayla Fields Award.

The choices of those two athletes by the sponsors are hard to argue with. They are the leading all-time scorers in the county for their respective genders. Fields’ 2,783 career points for Salisbury and Sherrill’s 2,469 for West Rowan are iconic numbers in Rowan County’s rich sports history.

Both played on state-championship teams, both were starters in the ACC at N.C. State, and both have proven to be role models long after the ball stopped bouncing.

Both are young members of the Salisbury-Rowan Sports Hall of Fame, with Sherrill inducted in 2016 and Fields in 2019.

“These awards are for the kids,” said Reggie McConneaughey, spokesman for the sponsorship group. “When Shayla and Scooter were players of the year, they didn’t get  something they could hold onto. We want this to be an award an athlete can put on the mantel and look at with pride. There always going to be great basketball players in Rowan County.”