Records are made to be broken: Angie Peters held scoring record for 34 years

Published 11:19 am Tuesday, December 6, 2022

By C.Y. Peters

Star Correspondent

    She was simply one of the best of the best.  Angie Peters won too many awards to list in the sport of basketball and by the end of her high school career, she had over 50 college scholarship offers.  Her senior season would be the first year the three-point line was introduced to high school basketball.  Still yet, she scored nearly 2200 points.  The plaque at the school has Angie with 2187 points, but an article in the Elizabethton Star on February 18, 1988, has her with 2154 points.  On the 19, she scored 20 points against University High and 13 against Harrison Chilhowie in the Regional Tournament.  She would finish her career with eight points against Cloudland early in the game, going down with a knee injury but bringing her score total to 2195 points.

    Angie and her sister Lisa were two explosive ball players who led Coach Ronnie Hicks to many wins over a four-year period.  In her Sophomore season, she led the Rangers in scoring averaging 20 points and 14 rebounds per game. In the last three games, she scored 94 points and hauled down 54 rebounds in the regular season. Both girls started playing basketball in their uncle Jerry Peters back yard before playing for the Stoney Creek Youth Club. With Lisa in the 5th grade and Angie in the third, they played for Coach Harold Bowers and both were starters.

    In Elementary school, they won the Regional and District every year, as well as the league.  Twice they had unbeaten seasons.  Angie was the MVP in her seventh and eighth-grade years.  In high school, Angie made many big plays, one was bringing the Rangers from behind against Elizabethton when they trailed by 11, 33-22 at the end of the third.  Angie scored 16 points and the Rangers won 56-53.

    In high school, Angie was twice the Smokey Mountain Conference MVP and three times the District tournament MVP.  She was voted the upper East Tennessee Player of the year and was All-State in 1987 as a junior.  She was honorable mention All-American in the Street-Smiths list of All-Americans.  Up to her Senior season, she had led the Rangers to three District titles and three Sub-State appearances. Many great players have to wait several years for their jerseys to be retired, but not Angie.  Her number 22 jersey was retired when her senior season ended.  Angie played on four 20-game winning seasons for Unaka. During her senior season, she scored 51 points in two games, the first one against Johnson County setting a scoring record for girls’ basketball.  The other was against Unicoi County.

     On the boy’s side, Eddie Holly set the record of 43 points back in 1971.  Unaka boys Coach Aaron Dugger came close to Holly’s record, scoring 41 twice and 2020’s Will Sexton scored 42 against University High, but for now, Holly’s record of 52 years still stands.

    Angie went on to play college ball at Clemson.  Angie Peters’s three-pointer narrowed the gap to 59-57 with six seconds left in the game against U-Conn.  This game advanced U-Conn to the final four as they beat Clemson 60-57. Angie was one of the first girls inducted into the Carter County Sports Hall of Fame.

    This year Unaka’s Lyndie Ramsey broke the girls scoring record that stood for 34 years.  Lyndie also has come close to scoring the most points in a game, she scored 47 earlier this year.  She has the rest of the season and tournaments to break that record. Lyndie was the first girl to score 1000 points during her Sophomore since Leslie Campbell did it for Hampton in the mid-1980s.