After 38 seasons, 804 wins, nine state titles, Myers Park’s Barbara Nelson to retire
On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after a social media post quietly announced her retirement, Myers Park’s Barbara Nelson — perhaps the greatest girls’ high school coach of any kind from Mecklenburg County — got a video call from Russia.
On the other end was of the best basketball players Nelson has coached, former Myers Park state champion and Southern Cal Trojan Aliyah Mayzck, who graduated high school nine years ago.
“My assistant coach has had that announcement about me walking away ready for awhile,” Nelson said. “I was really trying to walk off into the sunset. I didn’t want a farewell tour. This has always been about the kids for me. Some people might not believe that. But immediately when that post when out, Aliyah FaceTimed me from Russia, and it’s midnight over there.
“She’s got her friends with her and they’re saying, ‘Don’t step away. The kids need you.’ That’s what I’m proud of, that somebody like Aliyah, who’s nearly in her 30s, still wants to have a relationship with me. Or that (former Providence Day point guard) Jill Ingram, who has two kids and is near 40, wants to still have a relationship. Or Amy Busby who was on my first team and is in her 50s. She still wants to have a relationship with me. I think that’s what means the most.”
In a nearly hour-long interview with The Observer this week, Nelson, 62, got teary, cheery and laughed a lot as she recalled her career, which included stops at Providence Day (1986-2007), Wingate University (2007-12) and Myers Park (2012-2025).
She had to be prodded to discuss her 804-312 overall record or her nine state championships.
But her career has been remarkable.
This year, Nelson became the 36th girls’ high school basketball coach nationally to win 800 games. She is second in N.C. in all-time wins behind Sandra Langley (SouthWest Edgecombe, 865).
She also led Wingate’s women’s team to its third NCAA Tournament Elite 8 and won gold medals in FIBA Americas and the FIBA World Championship with USA Basketball as head coach of the U16 and U17 teams in 2009 and 2010. Nelson was 18-1 as coach of the American team and was named USA Basketball Developmental Coach of the Year in 2010.
“It’s been a great run,” Nelson said. “But I’m tired right now. For the first time in 38 years, I don’t feel that urge to coach. That could change, but it’s how I feel right now.”
Nelson took a variety of questions from The Observer. Her answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
Q. What will you remember most about your career?
BN: That’s really hard to pinpoint, just one thing. It’s 38 years of basketball, and I coached high school, coached college and went back and coached high school. I had the USA Basketball experience and I coached AAU for my children, boys and girls. For a long time, that’s where my focus was. You get to a point in your life where you want your focus to change. I started feeling this way a little bit last year. But I said, “I want to back and make sure.” Myers Parks’ a good place and you don’t want to walk away from a good job and regret it.
Q: What was different about this last season, though, that solidified your decision?
BN: I went back and it was a very long year. I think the student has changed. Education has changed. I think the goal of education departments have changed, and athletes have changed. I worked through it this year, trying to figure out what I could change about me, to decide if I wanted to stay. But it wasn’t going to be the authentic me. I decided I am who I am and can only coach the way I know how to coach and can only teach the way I know how to teach. I don’t know that’s necessarily the direction education is going to continue to go, or even coaching.
Q: So what’s changed about teaching and coaching?
BN: I’ll give you an example. I’m in a class a couple weeks ago and we’re working on a project. I love project-based teaching. The kids say, “Do I really have to write paragraphs? Can I let AI do it?” I say, “No, this is your education, not AI’s education.” My class dissolved into a 30-minute discussion on how education has changed and why I thought it was important for them to write from their own brain, with their own words and thoughts after looking up information. Half the class thought that was irrelevant.
Q. What’s the long-term effect of that?
BN: I see that happening, more and more, kids feeling like what we do in education is not relevant for them and don’t feel like it fits their needs. Yet you try to read something they write and they can’t write. They use text language with no punctuation. I just don’t see that changing.
Q. Have things also changed for the athletes, like you say they have for the students?
BN: Kids have a lot of opportunities now, a lot more than I did as a kid growing up 45 or 50 years ago. I call it the “selfie generation.” They’re into the internet oohs and aahs, and it just really is different. Kids, in my opinion, have a shorter attention span and a shorter frustration level of working through things, and things happen very quickly in their lives. I’m not judging where they are. I think their brains work differently due to the internet, cell phones. And work is different. What they see as work is different than what I see as work.
Q: What made you so effective as a coach?
BN: You’d have to ask God that question. God gives you the abilities and the opportunity to try to use them. I grew up in a family that had a tremendous work ethic. I was the baby of five and I had a strong mother. My dad passed away when I was young and (my mom) never remarried, and I had a very strong female role model at a time in life where females were struggling to gain independence in this world. She had rules, like you can’t get a driver’s license until you can change a tire and change the oil in your car.
Q: How did you translate that into basketball?
BN: I loved the game. I still love it. It gave me a place to be and a place to belong and a place to learn accountability and responsibility. I loved the education it helped afford me and it opened doors for me and took me on trips and built relationships. Because I loved it, I wanted to know everything I could know about it. If I had the opportunity to sit down with somebody, I sat down and took notes. I would go to other people’s practices and listen to how they talked to the student-athletes and how they explained things.
I scout (opponents in person) and people are like, “Why are you scouting live when everything’s on video?” I want to see what confuses the coach and see what their go-to is and what’s their Achilles’ heel. It was just about being competitive and trying to find a way to make your team it’s best.
Q: So you loved the minutiae, right?
BN: People who say, “Practice is OK, but the games are best,” they missed half the battle. I love a challenge and I’m probably the most competitive person you know. I set my GPS in the morning. I know where I’m going but I’m competing with time. Can I get there quicker than the day before? I want to beat you at every level. I want to be the best conditioned team, the most supported team. That meant I had to compete with myself every day. Was I making practice good enough? Was I watching enough video?
Some people don’t want to do all that work and just go out and recruit talent. Yes talent can win and win a lot, but that was part of the reason I left Providence Day. When I’ve got more talent and win by 30 or 40, there is no challenge. I got bored.
Q: Will you miss basketball?
BN: Basketball gave me an outlet for my own competitiveness and needing to be challenged, and a chance to be in young ladies’ lives at a time when women were being given more opportunities and more decisions. Having someone to push them was important. The doors were swinging wide open and I didn’t want them to miss any opportunities.
Q. What’s next for you? Might you coach again?
BN: I’m at a point where I think my purpose may be changing and kids need adults who can impact them and maybe I can’t anymore. I’m open to what life has for me now. I’ll finish my teacher year at Myers Park and I have had people reach out about potentially coaching. I just don’t have that desire right now. I’d like to spend time with my grandchildren, my children, and I owe it to my husband to spend more time with him. There are just some personal things I should attend to in my life.
