On ‘Demon’ pep bands, 46-game win streaks and states. How Weddington High keeps rolling
Keith Mason has been coaching high school basketball for nearly 25 years, and the one thing he’s said he’s learned in all that time is to really appreciate when you have something good.
And Mason thinks his friend, Weddington High coach Gary Ellington, really understands what is happening in Union County.
“I think,” said Mason, head coach at Sun Valley High School, “that Gary realizes he’s got something really, really special.”
Weddington is 28-0 heading into Tuesday’s N.C. 4A regional semifinal home basketball playoff game with Charlotte’s Chambers High. The Warriors have a 46-game winning streak, an unorthodox “Amoeba” zone defense, a pep band called “Demon Monkey” (more on them later) and they are ranked No. 16 in the Ball is Life Fab 50 national poll, up there with perennial national powers like Oak Hill (Va) and Montverde (Fla.) Academy.
After winning the 3A state championship last season, the Warriors have moved up to 4A, now tangling with the top public school teams in the state, and they are three wins away from another ring.
And unlike most national powers, Weddington is a local team made up of teenagers who look like they could be taking your combo meal order at Chick-Fil-A, not be working on the type of a dominant two-year run rarely seen in North Carolina.
For one, the Warriors don’t have any 5-star recruits. None of the players have committed to a Division I school. They don’t have any 6-10 shot blockers or 6-5 jumping jacks ready made for YouTube highlight reels.
But they just win.
“You look at them, you watch them warm up, you know, the ‘eye’ test,” Mason said. “And it’s like, ‘How are they this good?’ But this lets people know it can still be done. Everybody thinks it can only be done at schools like (Lincolnton’s nationally ranked) Combine (Academy) because they can bring in kids from all over the place. So it’s amazing the run they’re making. You just don’t see it anymore in public schools, and most coaches don’t want to say it, but it kind of makes us feel good that a team is doing all that in public school.”
It all started at a middle school game
Weddington is located just past the Mecklenburg County line in southeast Charlotte. If you get off I-485 at Providence Road and head south, you’re just about there.
The school opened in 2000 and has enjoyed lots of athletic success, including multiple football state championships, and is the alma mater of All-American Will Shipley, now a freshman for Dabo Swinney at Clemson.
The basketball team has had four losing seasons since 2005, but it’s also had seven with at least 20 wins, including the 2013-14 team that set a school-record with 27, a mark that’s been broken this season. But in 2017-18, Weddington was going through a 9-17 run after graduating nine seniors, including star Ryan Schwieger, now a senior at NCAA power Loyola of Chicago.
Four Weddington Middle School eighth-graders went to watch the varsity play late that year.
Chase Lowe, AJ Cook, Kyle Frazier and Daniel Haughton had been part of 7th- and 8th-grade teams that lost just two games and won a county championship.
“They’re losing and we’re sitting there talking to each other,” Cook said. “We were like, ‘We need to change the culture,’ and ‘we can definitely win a lot of games and do special things when we get there.’”
Haughton transferred to Charlotte Latin, but Cook, Lowe and Frazier brought their winning attitudes and their confidence to high school — as well as their knowledge of this unusual defensive scheme that the Warriors employ.
When the trio were freshmen, Weddington was 16-12. As sophomores, the Warriors were 22-8 with a deep playoff run.
“We lost to Freedom in the Elite 8 on a last-second shot,” coach Ellington said. “We thought we had a chance to win the state championship. It was at Freedom, just an unbelievable game and atmosphere. And that’s what really propelled these guys to put in a ton of work and not let that happen again.”
Gary Ellington’s long road to coaching
Gary Ellington grew up in Franklin County, North Carolina, an area of about 70,000 people, about an hour from Raleigh. He played at Bunn High School there, and graduated in 1995. He wouldn’t go to college for six years, though.
“I didn’t touch a basketball for four years after high school,” Ellington said. “I got married and had a kid right out of high school. Four years after that, I got divorced and was working construction trying to figure out what I wanted to do.”
Ellington decided he wanted to go back to college, and called the coaches at local Louisburg College, who had recruited him in high school. Louisburg was a two-year school and Ellington was calling to inquire about being a team manager, already figuring he wanted to coach down the line. He ended up in a dual player-manager role as a freshman, and a full-time player as a sophomore. But after that season, he knew his time as a player was ending.
He wanted to stay close to basketball, and when he decided to transfer to UNC Charlotte, one of the Louisburg coaches put him in touch with then 49ers coach Bobby Lutz. Ellington got to work with the 49ers and knew, for sure, that he wanted to become a coach.
Ellington started as an assistant at Weddington under Don Newton, who was the first coach at the school, starting a few months after leading Chesnee to the 2000 S.C. 2A state championship game. And under Newton, Ellington began to learn about a non-traditional zone defense that had players line up in a 1-1-3 formation.
When Ellington was named head coach 15 years ago, he decided he would keep the defense but wanted to learn more about it. Turns out it was a version of Jerry Tarkanian’s infamous “Amoeba” defense that helped UNLV become a powerhouse in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Ellington studied what Newton was doing and what Tarkanian had done. He put his own twist on it. But when he shared his plans with coaching buddies, they pushed back.
“A lot of my friends discouraged me,” Ellington said, “because they thought it was too difficult to do in high school, but we decided to do it because it was unique. It’s become part of what we do and who we are, and we have gotten better and better through the years.”
The system meets the (right) talent
So over the first decade of his career, Ellington honed and modified his defense and he began running it in the middle school as well. That’s what Lowe and Cook and Haughton and Frazier had used to so much success when they were planning their varsity rise.
It’s a little like the Wing-T offense that Charlotte Catholic has used over the decades to so much success in football. Because most teams don’t run it, it’s hard to prepare for and execute against.
The Wing-T is something the Cougars run in middle school, too, so when the players get to high school, they understand it well.
In the case of the Weddington guys, however, they had mastered the Amoeba.
This season, the Warriors allow just 49 points per game.
“I had never heard of it before,” Lowe said, “but I learned how to do it in 7th and 8th grade, and by the time, I got to high school, I had a good idea of what it was. It gives teams trouble because it’s very unorthodox.”
Mason, the Sun Valley coach, agrees with the unorthodox part, and he sees it multiple times a year playing in Weddington’s conference.
Ultimately, he said, the Warriors protect the basket and make you shoot contested jump shots with defense rotating from places you don’t expect. But Mason said what also makes Weddington special is all of its players really understand the game.
Four average double figures, led by Lowe, a 6-5 point guard, who averages 17 points, 8.2 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 2.7 steals per game. Frazier, a 6-3 forward, averages 14.7 points, six rebounds and 2.1 assists. Cook, one of the best 3-point shooters in North Carolina, averages 12.7 points, 3.2 assists and two steals per game. He’s made 81 3-points this season, good for No. 9 overall in the state. And Evan Moore, the only junior in double figures, averages 11.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists.
“We played them and we held down their Big 3,” Mason said. “We held Lowe to eight points, Frazier to eight and Cook to two. They still beat us by 10. Evan scored 20. You can’t really pick your poison with them because it can come from anywhere on any given night. We hear it all the time that if you have the most athletes you should be good, but if you don’t have high basketball IQ, it doesn’t matter. You can get things done with athleticism but that’s only taking you so far. You have to know what you can do and know where people will be and know how to defend. That’s what it’s all about. They have that.”
On top of the basketball “smarts,” Lowe said Ellington instills a work ethic in his team he doesn’t believe many others have.
“Over the summer, coach would have us in the weight room for an hour, practicing for two hours, out in the sun, running bleachers,” Lowe said. “We’re getting up at 7, at 6, and getting in work while other teams are sleeping. I feel like our culture, along with our coaching staff, has instilled a sense of mental tranquility, I would say, a certain fortitude we all share. We don’t get rattled.”
Case in point: Mason was watching Weddington play Porter RIdge in the Southern Carolinas conference championship game. A Pirates player made a great move and scored easily. The Warriors defense had let down and the crowd had gone crazy.
“Gary shook his head,” Mason said of the Weddington coach. “He was like, ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ Normally coaches are (mad) right then, but he’s in that relaxed state knowing it may not happen again the rest of the game. They have that confidence, that swagger, that they’re going to win. That doesn’t happen often. I hope they go all the way.”
The big show in town
Union County Schools Supt. Andrew Houlihan marvels at the success of the county’s top team. Union County has developed sort of a reputation for producing state champions in multiple sports, but nothing quite like this.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” Houlihan said. “To have a nationally ranked public school team and to have this kind of success is unprecedented.
“And we’re proud of them.”
Weddington home games have become a happening now. Team introductions are sometimes done by flashlight and the school has a pep band, called Demon Monkey, that keeps everyone fired up. Games are almost always sold out and get ear-splitting loud.
“It’s amazing playing for this team,” said Frazier, an 18-year-old senior. “This team has been my family for six years. The fan support is just amazing, and our students have really come out this year and have been very encouraging. That band is amazing. They keep you energized.”
The truth is, the season is nearing an end. There’s at most two weeks left, but who wants to stop when you’re having this much fun?
Everybody wants to beat Weddington, to end the streak, and Weddington just enjoys looking like the team anyone can beat, but no one has been able to.
“I’d be lying,” Cook said, “if I said I knew that we would be nationally ranked with no real 6-10 big guy or anything like that, but man, is this fun.”
