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The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Wednesday to name West Charlotte High's gym after former basketball coach Charles McCullough, an alumnus who led the Lions to five state titles.

West Charlotte High’s gym will be named for legendary basketball coach Charles McCullough.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Oct. 12 to name the facility for McCullough, who coached the Lions for 34 seasons. The school opened its new campus on Senior Drive in August.

McCullough, a Charlotte native and 1956 West Charlotte graduate, became basketball coach in 1960. By the time he retired in 1993, his Lions squads won more than 600 games and earned five state championships.

“Coach McCullough was much more than a coach – he was a mentor who instilled pride in his players and his community,” said school board vice chair Thelma Byers-Bailey, who introduced the motion. “He competed successfully himself at the collegiate and national levels. Then he leveraged that experience to lift the students he coached to the highest levels. He was an outstanding coach, father, husband and all-around human being – and he inspired everyone around him.”

McCullough, who died in 2017 at age 84, spent two years in the Army before enrolling at North Carolina Central University in Durham, was a three-sport athlete (baseball, basketball and track) with the Eagles before graduating in 1956.

It was at West Charlotte where McCullough made an impact as one of North Carolina’s best basketball coaches, winning when the Lions were relegated to an all-Black state athletic association as well as after schools were desegregated. He coached West Charlotte to 21 conference titles and seven state finals appearances, with three titles between 1987-93. After retiring from West Charlotte, McCullough coached at Livingstone College from 1994-2000, where went 51-105 while lifting the Blue Bears beyond the CIAA basement.

McCullough’s West Charlotte players were some of the best to ever bounce a basketball. Lions alumni include Dwight Durante, a 5-foot-8 guard who was Catawba’s first black player in 1965 and a 2017 inductee to the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame; Junior Burrough, who was a standout at Virginia and later the Boston Celtics; Jeff McInnis, who went on to North Carolina and long NBA career, including a stop with the Charlotte Bobcats (now Hornets).

Another former McCullough player, Gosnell White, succeeded him at West Charlotte and led the Lions to the 1999 state title.

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