WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Charlene Curtis, the primary Black ladies’s head basketball coach within the ACC, died Thursday after a battle with most cancers, the convention mentioned. She was 67.
Curtis was the top coach at Wake Forest from 1997-2004, after head teaching stops at Radford and Temple, the place she additionally was the primary African-American head ladies’s basketball coach.
Curtis performed basketball at Radford shortly after the passage of Title IX in 1972 and grow to be the college’s first 1,000-point scorer, male or feminine, and a member of its Hall of Fame. She majored in music and joined a Radford ladies’s basketball workforce that didn’t provide scholarships on the time.
Curtis labored within the ACC league workplace because the supervisor of officers for ladies’s basketball for 11 years, retiring in 2019. Along together with her ACC job, Curtis spent that point because the coordinator of girls’s basketball officers for the Southern Conference, the Big South and the Colonial Athletic Association.
“Charlene was a pioneer in the sport of women’s basketball, but more importantly, she was an amazing individual,” mentioned ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips. “Her kindness and class resonated throughout her life, and she will be missed by all who were fortunate to know her and her inspiring spirit.”
A local of Roanoke, Virginia, her early teaching jobs included an assistant at Radford and graduate assistant coach at Virginia in 1981. She labored with Virginia head coach Debbie Ryan and then-assistant Geno Auriemma. Curtis grew to become Radford’s head coach in 1984 at age 29, ending with a 121-53 report in six seasons.
She additionally labored two years as an assistant at UConn earlier than being employed at Wake Forest.
Curtis is survived by her companion of 24 years, Sharolyn Grant, and her sister and brother-in-law Millicent and Byrl Wright.
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