Charlotte Country Day’s basketball records belong to Beth Erb

The athletic department at Charlotte Country Day wants to construct a girls’ basketball record board. Mary Beth Luxton, the school’s director of sports information, has been poring over stat books to compile the records.

And when the board is finished, Beth Erb’s name will be all over it.

The Buccaneer senior has broken three girls’ basketball school records in her four years at Charlotte Country Day. And last week, she broke a boys’ record.

With a free throw in the third quarter of Country Day’s 38-31 win over Cannon School Jan. 29, Erb became the school’s career leading scorer for boys and girls basketball. She broke the boys’ record of 1,487 points, set by Sam Burrow in 2003. She finished with 23 points in the game.

The next night, she scored 28 points in a 39-33 loss to Charlotte Latin, passing the 1,500 point mark to put herself at 1,526 career points.

Erb, 17, said breaking the boys’ record means more to her than any of the others she’s set.

“Everyone expects a guy to always be scoring the most, and I think it’s, like, neat to have a girl on there,” she said. “Just to be able to prove that girls can score just as much. Just because we’re a girls’ sport doesn’t mean we can’t do as much.”

The 5-foot-6 guard set two girls’ school records earlier this year.

She set the single-game scoring record with 40 points in a December win against High Point Christian, breaking her own record of 32 points from last year. Erb also broke the girls’ career scoring record of 1,164 points – held by 2010 graduate Janice Roberts – with 12 points in a loss to Parkwood in December.

Last season, she set the season scoring record with 490 points. Through Feb. 3, she’s only 11 points away from breaking that record this year.

“I’ve been shocked at the records I’ve broken because I didn’t come in here expecting to break a bunch of records; it just kind of happened,” Erb said. “Every time I play, I don’t think about, ‘Oh, I need to score a certain amount of points so I can get a record.’ It just kind of comes with the flow.”

Erb has played on varsity since her freshman year. Andre Haston, who is in his third year as varsity head coach and was the junior varsity head coach when Erb was a freshman, says she learned from the older players about how to lead a team.

“I think that experience that she gained from them about how to lead a team is where she grew the most,” Haston said. “Then after they left her sophomore year, she had to really step up and take that scoring role.”

Erb averaged 13.6 points as a sophomore and had scoring help from seniors Brittany Powell (8.7 points) and Sydney Jones (8.5). After they graduated, Erb became the Buccaneers’ main scoring threat.

As a junior, the all-conference and all-state selection player averaged 20.5 points; no other player on the team averaged double digits. Erb averages 21.8 points this year, more than half of the average points scored in a game by the entire Buccaneers team (37.8). The next closest player is London Vaughn with 5.3 points a game.

In the Jan. 29 game against Cannon, Beth Erb played all but two minutes of the game: the last 30 seconds of the first quarter, and the last minute and a half of the third quarter. That was an unusually large amount of rest for Erb.

“I get exhausted, I’m not going to lie,” said Erb.

She knows she’s the focus of opposing defenses and that she needs to score. Erb encourages other players on the floor to shoot and go to the basket so they build confidence – and take some of the pressure of her.

“I feel a lot of pressure sometimes, and I feel like I have to be on top of my game all the time. Because if I’m not, I feel like I’m letting the team down,” Erb said.

Charlotte Country Day is 10-11 (through Feb. 3) this year, already winning more games than last year (nine). Erb called it a rebuilding year, with many young and new players.

Erb acts as a second coach, talking to the team during timeouts or before Haston comes in at halftime.

“You always want that player that’s a coach on the floor,” Haston said. “She brings so much energy – and the teaching and enthusiasm – and when she comes with intensity, some of the other girls feed off it.

“... The perfect thing about it is I can just come in (at halftime) and talk Xs and Os,” Haston added. “She already did the part where she put her foot up their behinds.”

Erb has left her mark on other Charlotte Country Day sports, too. She is an all-state field hockey player and plays soccer in the spring. If she is accepted into UNC Chapel Hill, she will walk on to the field hockey team. If not, she hopes to walk on to the basketball team at Appalachian State.

Haston doesn’t want to think about Erb leaving.

“I’ll miss her next year,” he said.

But Erb’s name will be all around the program and in the record book even after she leaves. She gives future girls – and boys – basketball players something to aspire to beat.

“I think for me, just in girls’ sports alone, to see a female athlete ... take over what generally in any school would be a boys’ record, I think it’s awesome,” Haston said. “I think not only here at Country Day – I think that’s something that could be looked at around the city, or even nationally. I mean, you don’t know too many schools out there that would have a female hold that type of record.

“So, I think it’s impressive and something that, you know, other female athletes should look up to.”