Women’s Basketball Coach Darlene Joyner retiring at Northwest Guilford High School

Longtime Northwest Guilford High School teacher and coach Darlene Joyner has announced today that she will retire from her head varsity girl’s basketball coaching position at Northwest Guilford High.

She is a graduate of Northwest Guilford High School and Guilford College where she is a member of the Guilford College Athletic Hall of Fame. After graduating from Guilford College, she came back to teach and coach at her high school alma mater Northwest Guilford for the entirety of her thirty three year coaching and teaching career. She is also a member of the Guilford County Athletic Hall of Fame.

Coach Joyner has been the head basketball coach at her alma matter since 2002 and leaves with an with an overall record of 362 wins and 109 losses. In that time, the team has won three West Region 4A championships and two 4A state championships in 2017 and 2018. The 2018 team finished ranked 20th in in the country by MaxPreps. In her coaching career at Northwest, she also won a softball 3A state championship in 1996 and won the West Regional 4A volleyball state championship in 2015. She was selected by the NCHSAA as the Toby Webb Female statewide coach of the year for the 2015-16 school year.

Comments from Principal Ralph Kitley and Athletic Director John Hughes
“Our school and community have been blessed to have Coach Joyner as a resource for our young women for so many years. She is the real deal, a true self-sacrificing teacher and coach who always pushes her kids to be the best. I was fortunate to work alongside her on the basketball staff for several years before she became head coach, and she did not change a bit when she inherited our program as the head coach after the retirement of Bob Yow. Her energy and focus never wavered as a coach and she always committed herself 100% to her girls. It was never about her or her individual accomplishments, it was always about the success of her girls. I am saddened along with our girls as we will miss Momma J. I am so thankful for her contributions to Northwest and to my life, she is a tremendously special individual and coach.”
John Hughes

“Coach Joyner has meant so much to the Northwest Guilford High School community. She cares about all of her student-athletes, and has spent countless hours in the classroom and on the courts and fields working to help them become better at their respective sport, but she also teaches life lessons to help make them better people. Coach Joyner has received many accolades and awards during her tenure as a head coach in three sports at Northwest, but she is a humble person that has, and will, always give the credit to her student-athletes for any and all accomplishments. Northwest Guilford High School will greatly miss Coach Darlene Joyner.”
Ralph Kitley

Courtesy of John Hughes
Athletic Director
Northwest Guilford High School

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Above is the NWG Press Release and below is the GreensboroSports.com inside take…..

**********Not to heap any coals on us, but we called this one here at the site about two weeks ago, when Guy Shavers was stepping away, as the men’s coach at Southwest Guilford….We have had a ton of hunches over the past several months-to-a-year, and let me make it clear, I am no Jockstronamus, but we have been hitting and making the calls pretty darn close in the recent stretch…We said in our post a few weeks back that we were seeing men’s coaches walking away, and told everyone not to be surprised, that we could the girl’s coaches, and a couple of veterans, ready to walk away and call it quits…There may be at least one women’s veteran coach still out there, that may be hanging the whistle up and will let you know, when the whistles stop blowing….

Coach Joyner treated us like kings and we love and appreciate all she did for us here in the media….She was always first-class and she made us feel welcome and part of the team, for the entire ride, going back to the State Title run in 2016, the title take in 2017 and when the Vikings did it again in 2017, and then they came up a bit short, here in 2019…

Coach Joyner and Hayley Barber, Toni Tucker, Catherine Moore, Morgan Pointer, Savannah Neas, “Little” Lindsay Gauldin, Bria Gibbs, Cayla King, Liz Kitley, Sandra Womack, Reagan Kargo, Megan Harkey, Thalia Carter, and so many more, and we knew them all and the number that always gets me, when I look back at the NWG girls basketball team, is that they still have not lost a conference regular season game since, February 11, 2104 and that was a 47-45 loss, to then conference-member, Southwest Guilford HS…

I really enjoyed being around this team, Coach Joyner and these kids over the years, and we thank Coach Darlene Joyner for all of her years of service, going back all the way to being a basketball player at Northwest Guilford HS, and then on to Guilford College back in the day…

A job well done, by a local native son/daughter and do enjoy your days and year of retirement…..**********

++++++++++How about Mike Everett as the new women’s/girl’s basketball coach at NWG??? Not sure if he is interested, but he has years of basketball coaching experience, going back to his days as an assistant coach for Jerry Steele, over at High Point College, and he has been a great addition to the NWG girls bench, as an assistant over the past few seasons….++++++++++

^^^^^^^^^^362 wins and 109 losses for Coach Joyner in 17 years as the head coach at NWG, those are some kind of numbers…Just a few losses over 100, and 362 wins, just a few shy of 400, that’s doing something right there…^^^^^^^^^^
[Coach Joyner over the past 5 seasons, went (139-12)…Not too shabby right there]……

$$$$$ From the GreensboSports.com site back on March 25:Busy in-season and now a busy off-season too…May see more coaching changes in the works and I would not be surprised to see a change or two on the girl’s sidelines also…A few of our longer-term girls coaches may be looking for some more spare and free time….$$$$$

You can’t start naming names these days, it is best to wait on the Press Release…..That one hunch I had on the boys was on the money, saying Coach Fancourt, then at Southern Guilford HS, would going to either Page or Grimsley, and now he is right there at Page, and he is a happy camper…Saw him over at Page last week, and he has hit the ground running, as they say……