Roy In The Valley

Before he returned to Chapel Hill to coach on the bench with Dean Smith, Roy Williams spent five years at Charles D. Owen High in Black Mountain.

The bond between Williams and the people and the place of his five-year introductory chapter to the coaching business from 1973-78 remains as steady as the currents of the Swannanoa River coursing through Buncombe County just east of Asheville. Hold onto your hat when his former players in the Valley, as this corridor of the Blue Ridge Mountains is called, get rolling on one of their favorite subjects – that skinny statistician freshly graduated from UNC and his run as the boys’ basketball coach, golf coach, assistant football coach and athletic director at Owen High.

As loud as Tar Heel fans get in the Dean Dome, there’s equal enthusiasm from Swannanoa and Black Mountain over to nearby Skyland, where Williams grew up and attended T.C. Roberson High.

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