Cissy Bristol Dyer as shown from a Murphy High School yearbook. Her number will go down in Andrews High School history Friday night.
Andrews – Friday night will be a special night for Wildcats basketball fans.
Not only will it be Senior Night for three Lady Wildcats, but Cissy Bristol Dyer will have her No. 14 jersey retired in between the girls varsity and boys varsity games against Robbinsville. The action will start with the boys junior varsity game at 5 p.m., with the girls and boys varsity games to follow.
Dyer, who graduated from Andrews in 1977 as Cissy Bristol, led the Lady Wildcats to the N.C. High School Athletic Association 1A girls basketball championship her senior year. She hit the game-winning free throws in the team’s 35-33 points as time expired, and they were the only points in the extra period. To this day, that 1977 title is Andrews only state girls title in hoops.
Dyer went on to play basketball at Clemson, where she was a 1979 All-ACC selection. She was the first female athlete at Andrews to get a full athletic scholarship and was one of the first women in the Smoky Mountain Conference to play at a Division I school.
Dyer returned to the area after college, where she spent 1990-2012 as the Murphy High School girls basketball coach and 1989-2001 as the softball coach. She led the Lady Bulldogs’ two basketball state championships in 1995 and 1997, as well as a runner-up finish in 1994.
As a softball coach, she led the Lady Bulldogs to three straight slow-pitch state championship appearances from 1988-90, winning back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990. The 1990 team went 21-0 and is the last Smoky Mountain Conference team to finish a season undefeated. After the state transitioned to fast-pitch softball in 1996, she led the Lady Bulldogs to the Final Four in 1997.
Dyer is already in both the Andrews and Murphy high school athletic halls of fame, as the entire 1977 state championship team.