Carole Mewborn McKeel, who lives in Goldsboro, was a pioneer in women’s sports at Barton College, where she spent 18 of her 21 years from 1967 to 1987 coaching basketball and volleyball and teaching. She spent her first eight years at the school teaching and taking interested young ladies to play other sports in club (or extramural) sports. Her hard work and dedication paid off in 1975 when women’s sports became official. The school offered its first athletic scholarships for women in 1976.
She is also credited for initiating talks about an Athletic Hall of Fame at Barton. Just prior to a basketball game at Catawba in 1980, she was relaxing in the gym lobby when she took notice of their “Wall of Fame.” She thought it was a nice concept and took the idea to athletic director Ed Cloyd, who asked her to draw up some guidelines for an Atlantic Christian Athletic Hall of Fame. Twenty years later, she finds herself among the new inductees.
McKeel was born to Ervin and Evelyn Mewborn on December 12, 1943. She played basketball at LaGrange High School and was a regular in summer league softball. She attended East Carolina University, where she earned undergraduate degrees in physical education and psychology and later, a Master’s of Arts in Education.
She took a job as a physical education instructor at Barton in 1967, and soon found herself immersed in women’s sports. She took a group of young ladies to a Sports Day at Appalachian State in 1968, and that was the first time any of them had ever seen power volleyball, with overhead serves, hits and spiking. That winter, ECU and other schools in the area wanted to get together to play some basketball so McKeel would take players like Norma Respass, Sandra Langley and Debbie Webb Sharpe over to play on their own funds.
After about six years of extramural play, the women finally went under the flag of the athletic department in 1975, playing in the North Carolina Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (NCAIAW).
McKeel, who was married to Ronal McKeel in 1974, coached both volleyball and basketball, winning more than 100 games in basketball and directing the Bulldogs to their first women’s title in the Carolinas Conference in 1980. That team went 17-7 behind the play of Cathy Wall, who was tournament MVP. That following year, the team was nationally ranked after winning 13 straight but lost in the District 29 Tournament to Winston-Salem State.
Tyra Boyd and Gloria Burks earned All-America honors for Coach McKeel during that time. Her teams from 1975 to 1985 only had one losing season.
McKeel got out of coaching in 1986, the year after her husband died, and spent the remainder of her tenure at Barton supervising student teachers and directing the field experience program for P.E. majors.
And, along the way, she helped build a Hall of Fame to which she now belongs.
