Myers Park girls’ basketball coach Barbara Nelson reaches milestone with victory

She did it.

On Tuesday, Myers Park’s Barbara Nelson became the second North Carolina girls’ basketball coach to reach 800 wins.

Nelson reached the milestone when her visiting Mustangs defeated Palisades High School, 58-44.

Only current SouthWest Edgecombe coach Sandra Langley has won more games as a head coach in state history; Langley had 857 wins entering Tuesday.

“It really means you’ve been surrounded by a lot of really good people — players, coaches, athletic directors, my children, my husband,” said Nelson, who has coached at Providence Day (1986-2007), Wingate University (2007-12) and Myers Park (2012-present) with nine state titles.

“It’s one of those things that — once your career is over — you don’t really look back at the wins and losses, you think about the kids that you coached and the adults that they’ve become now and the opportunities that you’ve had,” Nelson said.

“My teams have had some pretty cool opportunities over my lifetime. We’ve played in Arizona and New York and Florida and done a lot of things.”

Tuesday’s victory gives Nelson a career record of 800-309, which makes her the 36th girls high school basketball coach in the nationa to record 800 or more wins.

“I’ve been fortunate to have great assistant coaches,” said Nelson, who estimates she’s had 40 or more assistants in her head coaching career. “We’ve been lucky to have some great talent and we’ve been fortunate enough to develop what we’ve had.”

In Tuesday’s win, the Mustangs (9-11, 7-1) trailed at least once in all four quarters of the South Meck 4A Conference game.

But after Palisades (8-11, 3-5) took a 36-35 lead with 7:31 to play, Myers Park closed the game on 23-8 run for the victory.

Sophomore guard Summer Thomason hit three of her seven 3-pointers in that surge and finished with a game-high 23 points. Amani Barner added 16 points for the Mustangs. Tynilla Simpkins led Palisades with 14 points.

“Some things went well that hadn’t been going well earlier,” Nelson said of the fourth quarter surge. “This team has struggled some this year. And we’ve been fighting to get better. We’re 9-11 and we’re in a three-way tie for first.

“We lost some really tough games early in the year. So the message for this team is just to push forward and make the playoffs.”