IT WAS THE QUIETEST ROOM IN MANHATTAN. No taxi horns, no sirens, no click-clacking of heels against pavement. The Charlotte Sting faced playoff elimination, but the locker room was suffused with a calm confidence, a collective belief that every piece they needed was within those four walls. All that lay between them and a WNBA Eastern Conference championship was the New York Liberty and … a training table?
Deep within Madison Square Garden, the team gathered for what threatened to be the final pregame address of the season. After New York claimed Game 1 of the conference finals in Charlotte, the Sting had to beat the Liberty twice on the road to win the best-of-three series. Head coach Anne Donovan reviewed the game plan and matchups, and her assistants followed up with spirited exhortations. But it was Charlotte Smith, the Sting’s unofficial team chaplain, who closed the meeting.
“There was a training table in the middle of the guest locker room where you sat to get treatment and your ankles taped,” Smith recalls 19 years later. “I got the team to march around the training table like we were marching around the Walls of Jericho. I told them that the walls would come tumbling down, and that we would win the series.”
This story is from the October 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2020 edition of Charlotte Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
‘This Is How We're Going to Make Your Child Better'
Pediatric neurosurgery is technically and emotionally complex—and traditionally dominated by men. As Novant’s first female pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Erin Kiehna Richardson has had to learn the intricacies of a demanding field and battle sexism along the way
The Dumbledore of CMC
A surgery resident wrote a series of children’s books and created a special kind of medical magic
LGBTQ HB2+5
Five years after the furor of House Bill 2, the LGBTQ community—in Charlotte, in North Carolina, and across much of the nation—fights attacks on new fronts
Oh, Snap!
New ‘selfie museum’ in Concord celebrates the 1990s
ALLISON LATOS
The WSOC anchor on her hard trek from one episode of loss and grief to another—and the meaning of resilience
GOOD HEALTH
For years, Charlotte has been one of the largest American cities that lacked a four-year medical school. The health care professionals who finally made it happen overcame a series of setbacks, false starts, and failures, and they plan to use their clean slate to create a new kind of community asset
Summer Partee
From woodwork to retail, the kindergarten teacher-turned-designer has learned how to do it herself
Uptown or Downtown?
Archives illuminate how long we’ve argued over the perennial question
NOW OPEN NOVEL ITALIAN
Paul Verica brings a simpler version of the city’s hottest food trend to NoDa
TOP DOCTORS 2021
The annual list you can't without
