The last horn sounded in Chapel Hill, and the West Mecklenburg celebration began — another round down, another game to play.
For first-year West Mecklenburg coach Chris Ewell, the feeling lasted only a moment.
“My mindset was back to work,” Ewell said, adding that he let the kids enjoy the moment for a bit before he began to refocus them on what lay ahead.
That mindset of pride and restraint has become the heartbeat of one of the state’s most dramatic high school basketball turnarounds.
One season after West Mecklenburg finished 0-25, the Hawks are in the third round of the N.C. High School Athletic Association 7A state playoffs after a 49-39 road win at Chapel Hill on Thursday night.
Ewell doesn’t pretend the rise happened by accident. It started with a hard reset of expectations, he said.
“Just establish the right type of culture,” he said. “Establish what hard work is, what determination is. We’re gonna work hard. We’re gonna play hard. I’m gonna hold you accountable. I hold them accountable to a standard.”
That’s what Ewell said was missing. He arrived at West Mecklenburg with a simple diagnosis of what went wrong before. What he heard and what he saw all pointed to the same void.
“Just hearing from the past, there wasn’t a lot of buy-in, there wasn’t a lot of accountability being held, and just the work ethic was nonexistent,” he said.
That was the thing Ewell set out to change.
“Nothing’s ever been easy for me or handed to me,” he said. “Same way with the kids. Nothing’s easy for them. Nothing’s been handed to them.”
So Ewell set out to lead by example, to show his team what working hard means.
“I know how hard I work,” Ewell said. “[The players] gotta match my energy, and they’ve done a good job of doing that.”
“Let’s compete.”
Early in the season, Ewell saw flashes.
But he also saw what he had expected: inconsistency, unfamiliarity, a group learning how to play together with a new standard, with new expectations.
“We were a little bit up and down early, which was to be expected,” said Ewell. “Guys still getting used to playing with each other, with the speed of the game.”
West Mecklenburg won its first two games of the season over Berry Academy and Harding, then lost three straight to Jesse Carson, Chambers, and West Charlotte. There was another three-game slide in late December and early January, but the Hawks found their footing after that.
“Once we got into conference play and we started to go on a little bit of a win streak, I started seeing the belief in their eyes,” Ewell said of his players.
Beginning with a 72-69 win over Myers Park on Jan. 20, West Mecklenburg won nine straight games, including 11 of its last 12. The only loss during that time was a 54-49 loss to South Mecklenburg.
The most important shift wasn’t just the coaches demanding more; it was players demanding more from each other.
“Everybody was holding each other accountable, not just the coaches holding players accountable,” Ewell said. “I tell them, ‘A player-led team is gonna go farther than a coach-led team.’”
Ewell’s guiding principle for his team is simple and repeatable.
“Let’s compete,” he told his team.
The promise Ewell made to his team this season was: compete, execute, and you’ll be in games that matter.
“As long as we do those things, we give ourselves a chance,” he said.
And he was right.
The New West Meck
For Ewell, the lasting impact of this run might not be where the Hawks’ season ends; it’s more than likely the message it sends to the wider West Mecklenburg community.
“The community has gotten behind us. Alumni have gotten behind us,” he said.
And for the younger players, those watching from the junior varsity or middle school level, Ewell offers both a warning and an invitation.
“It’s the new West Meck,” Ewell said. “It’s a new standard. It’s a new culture. Understand you’re going to be coached … You’re going to have success if you buy in.”
For the players on the team, this season offered them proof that hard work can pay off.
“This season is proof that if you believe, you can achieve. If you believe in yourself, you put the work in, you buy in, you have the right type of support, you can do anything that you want to do,” Ewell said. “It’s baby steps … You can’t just. try to skip the steps.”
West Mecklenburg didn’t skip any steps, but it did stack them.
And now the Hawks are still playing.
West Mecklenburg will travel to Marvin Ridge in the third round on state playoffs on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
