Jamyrah Cherry, heads up court for the Hornets in 2024. Photo Credit: Sean Meyers

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

SALISBURY — Jamyrah Cherry, a 5-foot-11 local athlete with hoop dreams, has announced a commitment to Livingstone College’s basketball program.

Cherry dances, reads, models and keeps up with fashion trends, but those are hobbies. What she’s passionate about is hoops. She’s a modern teen with an old-school mentality. If she could, she would play basketball every day and every night.

Cherry played the 2024-25 season for the Winston-Salem Christian National team that was ranked as the strongest high school girls basketball team in the state by MaxPreps. MaxPreps ranked WSC National and Sanford’s Grace Christian as the top two N.C. squads, with NCHSAA 4A champion Lake Norman third.

“Playing for Winston-Salem Christian was great preparation for college basketball,” Cherry said. “Long, hard practices. Great competition. And we traveled out of state for a lot of games. We played in Arizona, New York and D.C. We went to Florida twice.”

Cherry put up modest stats for the Lions, but she carved out a role off the bench with her hustle and versatility. She takes pride in being able to play any position from point guard to power forward. Even more important, she can defend all those positions.

“I played behind a Boston College commit (Jocelyne Grier),” Cherry said. “But I was able to improve as a player. We played tough, physical teams, and it made me more aggressive.”

Cherry began her high school career at Cannon School in Concord where she played alongside a flock of talented players. She played three seasons there from 2020-21 to 2022-23.

Cannon School won a state championship her first year and was state runner-up her last year there when she contributed 7 points and 7 rebounds per game. At Cannon, she was not the big scorer, but she received team-oriented awards such as “Glue Player” and “Rebound Queen.”

Cherry played the 2023-24 season at Salisbury High for coach Lakai Brice, and along with MaKayla Noble and Shamya Arnold led the team to a 20-8 record.

Cherry scored 18 in her first game as a Hornet. She played every position, but mostly point guard,  and turned in an outstanding season, posting 14 double-doubles. She came close to some triple-doubles. She scored in the post, she scored from the 3-point line, and she got to the foul line.

There was a night in the Central Carolina Conference Tournament semifinals that Cherry carried the Hornets to a 57-47 win against East Davidson. She made three 3-pointers and had a trio of three-point plays in a career-best, 30-point effort.

She averaged 13.3 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks for the season and was All-CCC and second team All-Rowan County in a season in which the county was loaded with the strong senior classes at West Rowan and North Rowan. She was honored with the Team Above Self Award.

After her school season ended at Winston-Salem Christian, Cherry joined the Carolina All-Stars AAU program and showed coaches she could still score if her team needed her to score. A lot of evaluators seeing her for the first time put her on sleeper lists and best uncommitted players lists.

Livingstone has known about Cherry for quite a while and offered her back in October, but she kept her options open. The Blue Bears never gave up on landing her, and their diligence finally paid off with a commitment.

“There are a lot of advantages to Livingstone,” Cherry said. “It’s right here at home, so it’s convenient for me and for my family. I like the school and I like the coaches. They were always the most persistent as far as recruiting me. They were the school that wanted me the most and you want to be where you’re really wanted.”

Cherry is a star in the classroom (3.7 GPA) and was accepted by a host of larger schools as a student, but she loves basketball, so Livingstone proved to be the best fit.

Cherry always has enjoyed her English and history classes, but she plans a biology major at Livingstone with the career goal of making a difference for people in the medical field.