When they're coaching, Sylvia Crawley and Stephanie Lawrence Yelton are just feet apart.
They don't need to be any closer.
We can look at each other and say a whole sentence without saying a word
Crawley said.
The former college teammates hold similar coaching philosophies. They admittedly think of the same plays and strategies at the same time. This synergy is the result of a relationship that has come a long way ' 720 miles, to be exact.
That's the distance between Crawley's hometown of Steubenville, Ohio, and Yelton's home of Morrow, Ga. It's a measurement that goes beyond mileage. Steubenville is a smaller town,
according to the Bobcats' head coach, built on the steel industry and fueled by a way of thinking that's older than the mills that have long since closed.
It's the kind of town where most people who are born there die there Crawley said.
For Yelton, there was a different way. Morrow is sandwiched in metropolitan Atlanta, built on three consecutive girls' basketball state championships and fueled by the essence of suburbia.
Despite the contrast, the two found themselves headed to the same place when they signed on to play basketball at the University of North Carolina. Although Crawley and Yelton didn't live together, they saw their differences fade away through the team.
As teammates at North Carolina we were good at integrating into each other's activities
Yelton said. If a player had a meeting and wanted her teammates to go with her
we'd go.
In their coaching, the pair stresses that type of chemistry ' both on and off the court.
Of course, on the court was always more fun.
Crawley spent most of her playing time posted up on whichever side of the court that had Yelton on the perimeter. Forced to respect Yelton's outside shot, teams were unable to double-team Crawley.
Those 720 miles had been reduced to the 13-foot-9-inch stretch from the low-block to the 3-point line.
Nothing, however, brought more closeness than one particular moment.
At the end of Crawley's senior season in 1994, the Tar Heels found themselves down two points against Louisiana Tech in the national championship. With .7 seconds on the clock, Yelton was to send a lob to Crawley to tie the game.
However, Yelton didn't like how the inbounds play developed and called her team's final time-out.
She called the time-out and going back to the huddle I was like
'You know I was open! You could have passed that ball to me!' Crawley said. I'm sure glad she didn't.
On the next attempt, Yelton looked behind the arc and found Charlotte Smith, who nailed the game-winning 3-pointer.
Right then, any space between the two was nonexistent.
At that moment
with zero seconds left on the clock
we all had something in common
Crawley said. We went through things like that
which made classifications we had for each other disappear.
Both went on to play professionally after college, Crawley to Europe and Yelton to New Zealand.
Crawley continued her professional career in Denver, Portland, Indianapolis and San Antonio. All the while, she kept a spot as an assistant at North Carolina before moving on to Fordham.
Yelton had been on staff at Wake Forest before taking a head-coaching job at Charleston Southern University.
It was impossible to keep track of the miles now.
Despite the hectic career moves, Yelton said keeping in touch, while rare, never seemed awkward.
The North Carolina family is very unique
she said. You could go months or years without talking to someone when all of a sudden you get that e-mail or phone call and it's like you never left Chapel Hill.
It was one of those chance e-mails that laid the groundwork for Yelton to follow Crawley to Ohio.
I knew I wanted a staff that I trusted
