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A three-time Olympic gold medalist, Heather O’Reilly was also one of the all-time greats at one of the all-time greatest dynasties in college sports -- the UNC women’s soccer team.
O’Reilly helped lead UNC to two NCAA championships, in 2003 and 2006. She was already a member of the U.S. Women’s National Team while in school at Chapel Hill and played on that squad for 14 years, from age 17 to age 31. Besides winning gold medals with the USNWT in 2004, 2008 and 2012, she also won the women’s World Cup in 2015.
After a long national and international soccer career, the 39-year-old O'Reilly has returned to Chapel Hill, where she coaches soccer, pursues a variety of business interests and chases after her two young sons. She talks in this podcast about juggling soccer and family life, as well as her hatred of penalty kicks and how she and her husband helped save the 100-year-old Carolina Coffee Shop on Franklin Street from going out of business.
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NASCAR hall of famer Rick Hendrick is an ultra-successful businessman in the automotive world. But what he’s known for in sports circles is a NASCAR dynasty that is celebrating its 40th year in existence of 2024 and ranks as the winningest team in Cup Series history. Hendrick’s 14 Cup series season titles have come with five different drivers: Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte, Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson.
Hendrick is also a leukemia survivor and has overcome a number of personal tragedies, including a plane crash that devastated both his NASCAR operation and his family 20 years ago. At age 75, he remains in charge of both Hendrick Automotive Group - which employs almost 11,000 people - and the Hendrick Motorsports racing operation, which is in contention for another championship in 2024.
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Jim Nantz is one of the most famous sports broadcasters in America. Since being hired by CBS Sports in 1985 at age 26, he’s become a 5-time national sportscaster of the year and has provided the play-by-play soundtrack for many of the most iconic moments in sports. Nantz has called multiple Super Bowls, Final Fours and the Masters.
The Nantz family also has deep roots in North Carolina. Nantz, 65, not only was born in Charlotte, but both his mom’s and dad’s families are deeply embedded in our state. Nantz was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2024.
For his "Sports Legends of the Carolinas" interview, Nantz sat with us in Greensboro, where he was broadcasting a golf tournament. We spoke about his family, the time he called a Super Bowl featuring the Carolina Panthers and the origin story about why he opens every telecast with the phrase “Hello friends.”
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As the oldest head coach in college football’s top division, UNC’s Mack Brown now anticipates the question about when he’s going to retire long before recruits or their parents pose it. “It gets asked before they say hello now,” Brown said.
Brown will turn 73 on Aug. 27th, two days before the Tar Heels’ 2024 season opener at Minnesota. Now that Alabama’s Nick Saban has retired, Brown stands alone as the only Division I head football coach in his 70s. He’s also the winningest active coach in college football with 282 victories, piled up during head-coaching stops at Texas, Tulane, Appalachian State and North Carolina (twice).
Brown won a national championship at Texas and has taken UNC to a bowl game in each of the five years since his return to Chapel Hill prior to the 2019 season. He spoke during this podcast episode about the massive changes that are rocking college football, growing up in Cookeville, Tenn., and the way he's going to retire when he decides to do so.
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Julius Peppers, a fearsome pass-rushing defensive end, was one of the greatest Carolina Panther players ever. We caught up with Peppers at his home in Coral Gables, Fla., where he lives with his wife and children. He is preparing for a big weekend -- on Aug. 3rd, Peppers will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was elected in his first year of eligibility after 17 total seasons in the NFL -- 10 of them with the Panthers. Peppers finished his career fourth all-time in NFL sacks. Before that, he grew up in Bailey, N.C., and was both a football and basketball star for the UNC Tar Heels.
Peppers is one of the rare athletes to have played in both the Super Bowl and the Final Four, and he thinks he could have been an NBA player if he pursued that avenue. He also talks about chasing Michael Vick, Carolina's 2003 Super Bowl season and what being a hall of famer means to him.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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It’s almost time for the Summer Olympics to take over the sports world, as it does every four years.
The opening ceremonies are July 26th in Paris. And so for the first time in the three seasons of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” we went poolside to have a a candid conversation with Olympic swimmer and two-time gold medalist Cullen Jones.
Formerly a star college swimmer at N.C. State, Jones previewed the Paris swimming competition, talked about his own experiences in the Olympics and told us his origin story as to how he became one of a handful of African-American swimmers to succeed in the water at the sport’s highest levels.
Jones owns both two gold medals and two silver medals from the Olympics, where he competed for Team USA in 2008 in Beijing and 2012 in London. He also said the most important lessons from his athletic career came not during his record-setting wins, but from his losses. "Losing is great," he said at one point.
Now 40 years old, Jones lives in Charlotte with his wife and their five-year-old son. Our interview came at Life Time’s fitness center in Charlotte, and that excellent facility also let us borrow one of its several pools for our photo session.
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In North Carolina’s mountains, a football coach named Jerry Moore led Appalachian State to new heights two decades ago.
Now 84, Moore coached the Mountaineers from 1989-2012 and built a dynasty in Boone, N.C. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, he directed the Mountaineers all the way to the top of the mountain, winning three straight national titles at the FCS level. Those were the first three NCAA football championships any institution from the state of North Carolina had won, at any level.
Moore also coached the Mountaineers to arguably the most famous upset in college football history — a 34-32 win against No. 5 Michigan, in the 2007 season opener. Moore earned his way into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014.
In this interview, Moore talked about all of those championships, the brilliance of star quarterback Armanti Edwards and the upset in Ann Arbor, as well as making peace with his difficult departure from Appalachian State after the 2012 season and why he again fully embraces the program today.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Long before he became one of the biggest names in footwear, Stan Smith dazzled on the tennis court.
Smith, 77, is a tennis hall of famer who won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the early 1970s and was once ranked as the world’s No. 1 tennis player. He grew up in California but has lived for more than 50 years in Hilton Head, S.C., where he remains very active in the community and in his Smith Stearns Tennis Academy.
But if you’re not a tennis fan, what you likely know Stan Smith for is the iconic Adidas shoe that bears his name — a classic white leather shoe with green trim around the heel that also includes his likeness and signature. In fact, the name of his 2018 book was: “Stan Smith — Some people think I’m a shoe.”
Smith is much more than a shoe, though, and LeBron James’ production company recently made a documentary about him. We traveled to the S.C. coast to talk to him in the latest episode of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas.”
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Jimmie Johnson is, without question, one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. Three drivers rank at the very top of the all-time NASCAR Cup series champion standings, each with seven season titles apiece. They are Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Sr., and Johnson.
Of those three legends, Johnson is the only one who won five titles consecutively, from 2006-2010. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte in January. Johnson is now 48 years old, the same number that he made famous driving for Hendrick Motorsports. He still competes in select events and plans to do so in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway Sunday, for Legacy Motor Club, which he co-owns.
This interview with Johnson, where he spoke about racing, family and the two times he thought his life might be over, was conducted in Daytona Beach, Fla. It occurred before the recent announcement that Johnson plans to pull off an unusual double on Sunday. He will first be part of NBC’s announcing team for the Indy 500, then will fly directly to Charlotte in time to drive in the Coke 600. Johnson and his family — wife Chandra and their two daughters, Genevieve and Lydia — plan to return to live in Charlotte later this year, but are spending this school year overseas in London. Chandra is also an art connoisseur and founded SOCO Gallery, based in Charlotte.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity; a longer version is available on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast. The Johnson podcast episode is sponsored by Queen City Audio, Video and Appliances.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Muggsy Bogues remains the shortest player ever to play in the NBA, at 5-foot-3. Bogues stayed in the league for 14 years, most notably as the point guard for the exciting Charlotte Hornets teams of the 1990s that also starred Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning and Dell Curry. At age 57, he still lives in the Charlotte area today.
We sat down in Bogues’ home, inside a memorabilia room full of keepsakes from his career. We discussed Bogues’ experience being shot as a child; the neighborhood recreation center Bogues says changed his life; and the former star’s insistence that he really could dunk. In addition, we discussed Bogues playing himself in the movie Space Jam; his watching dumbstruck as Latrell Sprewell choked coach P.J. Carlesimo; and Bogues gives us the inside scoop on what Steph Curry was like as a child.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends .
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While Dell Curry is now known in public mostly for being the father of two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steph Curry, he had his own stellar NBA career.
Known for his three-point sharpshooting at a time when the NBA was far less enamored with that long-distance shot, the elder Curry had a 16-year NBA career that included 10 years as a player for the Hornets from 1988-98 -- the team's first 10 seasons. Curry earned the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award in 1994 and retired as the Charlotte Hornets’ all-time leading scorer (a record that stood for 20-plus years before it was broken by Kemba Walker). He and Muggsy Bogues both came to the Hornets via the 1988 NBA expansion draft and quickly became fan favorites in Charlotte.
Curry has served as the Charlotte Hornets’ color analyst on the team’s TV broadcasts since 2009. Now 59, Curry grew up in rural Virginia and has lived in Charlotte since his 2002 retirement from the NBA. He is the father of two current NBA players -- Steph and Seth -- and talks in this interview about the time Steph nearly quit basketball in frustration. We conducted this conversation in between sessions at a basketball camp Dell Curry has conducted for decades at Charlotte’s Levine Jewish Community Center.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. Our interns on this production are Zoe Williams and Christina Silvestri. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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As the NFL Draft approaches, the Carolina Panthers can only hope to hit a second-round home run like they did with Muhsin Muhammad.
The Panthers hold two high second-round picks — the 33rd and 39th overall — in the draft that starts April 25. In 1996, Muhammad was a promising wide receiver out of Michigan State that Carolina nabbed with the 43rd overall pick.
“Moose,” as most everyone calls him, went on to play 14 NFL seasons, including 11 with Carolina, and was known for his physicality, great hands and knack for making the biggest plays in the biggest games, He still owns the Super Bowl record for longest touchdown catch, at 85 yards against New England in the 2003 postseason.
Now 50 years old, Muhammad and his wife Christa have raised their six kids in the Charlotte area, and those kids have produced numerous college diplomas and athletic accolades. The Panthers, meanwhile, inducted Muhammad into the team’s Hall of Honor in 2023, and his name is now displayed at the top of Bank of America Stadium.
We met Muhammad at his office in Charlotte for his “Sports Legends” interview. He talked about shushing the crowd in Philly, his thoughts on the 2024 Panthers and Nick Saban’s viral comments about Moose that are still making the rounds on social media a decade later.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Ahead of the Women's Final Four, in this special rebroadcast episode (originally aired on October 5th, 2022), Scott Fowler sits down with legendary USC coaching legend Dawn Staley.
Dawn Staley, star of this week’s episode of “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” has had one of the most sensational careers in women’s basketball history. Currently the head women’s basketball coach at South Carolina, Staley’s Gamecock squads won national titles in both 2017 and 2022 and lead the nation in women’s basketball attendance every year. Under Staley, USC has also made the Final Four in four of the past seven seasons, and will be favored to repeat as national champions during the 2022-23 season.
Before her standout coaching career, Staley, 52, was the ACC Player of the Year in 1991 and 1992 at Virginia; a three-time WNBA All-Star for the Charlotte Sting; and a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Staley looks back at her road to South Carolina; the possibility of someday coaching in the NBA; and why her former players think she's going soft.
Then, Staley talks about sharing pieces of her national championship nets with Black coaches and journalists; her 5-year-old gray-and-white Havanese rescue dog, Champ, who’s become a star in his own right; and how she motivates players who have already won a national title.
This episode was originally published in two parts, with the second exclusive to premium subscribers. Now, for the first time, the full interview is combined here.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Alonzo Mourning would have become the greatest player in Charlotte Hornets history — if he had only stuck around.
Mourning played his first three NBA seasons with Charlotte after the Hornets drafted him No. 2 overall in 1992. He quickly turned into an intimidating, 6-foot-10 star for a Charlotte team on the rise. His scowl could scare you. His dunks could dent the hardwood. But a salary dispute led to the Hornets trading Mourning in November 1995 to Miami, where he became an even bigger star, won an NBA title in 2006 and eventually made the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2014.
For his “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” interview, we met Mourning in Miami, where he still lives and works for the Miami Heat, now as the team’s vice president of player programs.
Mourning, 54, discussed his years in Charlotte in detail and said he wanted to stay in Charlotte badly enough that he would have given the Hornets a substantial financial discount if they would have valued him correctly and kept him.
“I’m going to be extremely transparent to everybody out there,” Mourning said at one point in our interview. “Listen, I was willing to take a lot less money than I received in Miami.”
Mourning also discussed his life-threatening kidney disease and subsequent transplant in 2003, as well as his memory of making the greatest shot in Charlotte Hornets history in 1993.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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In Gastonia, Leonard Hamilton remembers restaurants he wasn’t allowed to come inside due to his skin color. He sat in the balcony of a movie theater because Blacks weren’t allowed to sit downstairs. He drank from one water fountain; whites drank from another.
With the help of faith and family, Hamilton rose from those circumstances to a coaching career that has now spanned more than 50 years. At age 75, Hamilton has directed the Florida State basketball program since 2002 and will lead the Seminoles in the ACC tournament, which begins Tuesday in Washington, D.C. He previously was the head coach at Miami, Oklahoma State and, for one season, with the NBA's Washington Wizards. A major gospel music fan, Hamilton also has his own gospel music recording label.
In his “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” interview, the three-time ACC Coach of the Year opened up about Gastonia, segregation and a coaching career where Hamilton has always been entrusted with teams that need “a little fixing up.”
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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The siren song of a bouncing basketball led Bobby Cremins all over the Carolinas.
Cremins crisscrossed both states during his hoops journey. He played basketball under Frank McGuire at the University of South Carolina in the late 1960s. He left for North Carolina to become the head coach at Appalachian State at age 27. At the end of his career, he would coach at the College of Charleston.
It was in between those two jobs where Cremins made his greatest mark nationally. Cremins coached Georgia Tech from 1981 to 2000 while earning multiple ACC championships, winning three ACC Coach of the Year honors and directing the Rambling Wreck all the way to the Final Four in 1990.
After 31 years as a college basketball head coach, Cremins now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., not far from the beach, with his wife, Carolyn. At age 76, he’s as charming as ever and surrounded by memorabilia from his career. His pickleball paddles are stowed by the front door. He remains a huge fan of the “March Madness” NCAA Tournament and claims he will fight anyone who ever tries to mess with basketball’s greatest month.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Richard Petty is 86 years old now, and his seven NASCAR Cup championships and record 200 wins at the sport’s highest level came long ago. But Petty is still going strong in Level Cross (pop. 3694), which sits right in the middle of Charlotte and Raleigh. Petty lives a stone’s throw from the house where he was born, and that house sits right next to the Petty Museum that houses an incredible amount of his stuff.
Nicknamed “The King” and a member of the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Petty long ago developed a signature look that is all his own: cowboy hat, black sunglasses, oversized belt buckle and cowboy boots. He showed up wearing exactly that to our interview.
Honestly, I would have been a little disappointed if he didn’t.
This interview with Petty serves as the Season 3 kickoff for the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” multimedia project. Petty and I sat inside his museum, on two high-back chairs, and talked about life, death, racing, autographs, Daytona, family and the time his own father took his first race win away from him via protest.
After we were done, a surprisingly spry Petty hopped off the chair and said: “You got my whole history, didn’t ya?”
Not quite, but we did hit a lot of the highlights. On the eve of the 2024 NASCAR season and the Daytona 500, there’s no better way to rev up the racing anticipation than a visit with “The King.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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From 1987-89, Steve Spurrier was the head coach at Duke, leading the Blue Devils to an ACC Football Championship in 1989. As a player, he won the Heisman Trophy in 1966 at the University of Florida. Coach Spurrier then returned to Florida as its coach in 1990.
Known as an offensive mastermind, Spurrier led the Gators to multiple SEC titles, as well as the national championship in 1997. Spurrier has deep connections to both Carolinas, because after Florida and a 2-year stint with Washington’s NFL team, Spurrier came to South Carolina, where he was the head coach of the Gamecocks for a decade, beating Clemson five straight times at one point, before abruptly retiring in the middle of the 2015 season.
We’d like to thank the Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club for providing space for this interview.
This episode is sponsored by Audi Charlotte. Celebrate the season with holiday savings on new Audis. You belong in an Audi from Audi Charlotte.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. Our interns on this production are Zoe Williams and Christina Silvestri. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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As a once-in-a-generation quarterback at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., Armanti Edwards led the Mountaineers to FCS national championships in 2006 and 2007 as well as an extraordinary road win over then-No. 5 Michigan, often called the biggest upset in college football history.
Lightly recruited out of Greenwood, S.C., Edwards would become the first two-time Walter Payton winner as the FCS National Player of the Year. He was also a four-time All-American and led App State to a 42-7 record as a starter. Edwards then became a third-round NFL draft pick by the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers employed Edwards from 2010 to 2013, trying to switch him from a star quarterback to wide receiver and punt returner with little success.
That was a period where Edwards said he experienced “the darkest time in my football career.” In our "Sports Legends" interview he also discussed in detail for the first time the circumstances of his release from the Panthers in 2013. Edwards would then have a strong career as a wideout in the Canadian Football League, where he once played on a team that won the CFL’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. He now lives in Charlotte with his wife and two children.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Loumay Alesali, Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. McClatchy's director of audio is Davin Coburn. Our interns on this production are Zoe Williams and Christina Silvestri. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends.
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Steph Curry, the all-everything point guard for the Golden State Warriors, is still in the prime of his career and already a “Sports Legend of the Carolinas.” In this deeply personal retrospective, the eight-time All-Star, four-time NBA champ and two-time league MVP offers Scott Fowler never-before-heard details about Curry's high school career for the Charlotte Christian Knights; leading Davidson College to the Elite Eight in 2008 — and in the process, giving Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski a glimpse of the talent UNC and Duke never bothered to recruit; the challenges for Curry of following in the NBA footsteps of his famous father, Dell; the biggest wins of his own sterling career; and the one thing that could get Curry to leave Golden State.
This special bonus episode of Sports Legends of the Carolinas is free for all listeners in its entirety. The episode is sponsored by Parker Poe, a law firm representing many of the Southeast’s largest companies and local governments in business and real estate transactions, regulatory issues, and complex litigation.
Sports Legends of the Carolinas is hosted by Scott Fowler. It's produced by Jeff Siner and Kata Stevens. McClatchy's director of audio is Davin Coburn. For lots more on the show, visit https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sportslegends .
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