By Stan Cole '87
BUIES CREEK, N.C. – Chris Carr was just 10 years old when he moved with his parents to Buies Creek in 1974. But he distinctly remembers the purpose for the relocation.
His father, Wendell, was hired by President Dr. Norman Wiggins as Campbell's Director of Athletics with the intention that Carr would lead the effort to elevate the Fighting Camel programs to NCAA Division I.
Wendell Carr had been a standout basketball player at Wake Forest and later was head coach at East Carolina. He and his wife Susie, along with Chris and his younger sister Tricia, made the move to Harnett County from Athens, W.Va., where Wendell had served as A.D. at Concord College.
Over the next eight years, Chris had a front row seat for the transition, then Campbell's infancy as a Division I independent.
At 10 years of age, Chris met future Big South player of the year Clarence Grier, when both were campers at the Campbell Basketball School. He also vividly recalls watching his father sketch out drawings for a new Fighting
Camel logo while seated at the family's kitchen table.
At that same table in 1983, Chris witnessed Wendell write out the first Big South Conference by-laws in long hand on a yellow legal pad.
For the previous decade, Campbell had competed as a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and enjoyed success across the region and country – especially in men's basketball, golf and soccer.
The golf team claimed the school's only national championship at any level in 1970 and was runner-up three years later. Those marked two of the programs seven top-five finishes in a nine-year span from 1969-77.
Campbell's soccer team reached the NAIA national tournament three times in a seven-year stretch from 1969-75, including a third-place finish in 1970.
The men's basketball team earned its first NAIA national tournament berth in 1970. Seven years later, with the Division I transition already in motion, the Fighting Camels became the first unseeded team to reach the NAIA championship game.
Campbell's move was first reported in The Prospect, then the school's quarterly alumni report, in October 1976. The following January, Carr attended the NCAA convention in Miami and Campbell applied for Division I status in the spring of 1977.
Without a conference affiliation, however, the Camels had to travel far and wide to put together schedules in men's soccer, basketball and baseball that included at least 75 percent of competition against Division I opponents.
R.V. Hight, who served as sports information director during the first two seasons of Campbell's Division I membership, recalls traveling to 13 different states with the men's basketball team in his tenure. In fact, Coach Danny Roberts' team played games in 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, during the program's inaugural D1 campaign in 1977-78.
Carter Gym accommodated just over 1,000 spectators as the basketball program's on-campus facility, so the Camels "hosted" games in Fayetteville's Cumberland County Memorial Arena, which sat around 5,000, and the old Raleigh Civic Center (capacity 3,600).
One contest that was scheduled to be played in Raleigh on Feb. 21, 1979, against Northeast Louisiana (now Louisiana-Monroe) was moved to Buies Creek due to a heavy snowstorm in the area.
"We were supposed to play in Raleigh, but couldn't because of the weather," Hight recalled almost a half century later. "They somehow made it down to Buies Creek and we upset them in Carter Gym. That was probably the biggest win for the team in those first two years."
That same Northeast Louisiana team later earned a berth in the 1979 National Invitational Tournament (NIT) and featured All-America forward Calvin Natt, who later was the eighth overall selection in the NBA draft. Natt scored 22 points and grabbed 17 rebounds, but the Camels – encouraged by a near capacity crowd despite the weather – rallied for a 70-69 win.
John Heckstall (17 points, 12 rebounds) and Ron Curtis (12, 12) both had double-doubles and the Camels held the visitors to just 38 percent shooting.
A search for a home
Among the most urgent tasks for Carr and the Campbell administration in its early Division I tenure was finding a conference in which to compete and building a new on-campus arena. The former priority took less than a decade to accomplish; the latter – 30 years.
In a May 4, 1977, story that appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer, Roberts told reporter A.J. Carr, "I believe we can have a new gym… in three-four years… we've got the complete support of the administration here."
Wendell Carr diligently worked to identify similar institutions that would be interested in forming a league. Campbell was set to host a meeting on campus in May of 1979 that brought together athletics administrators from East Carolina, George Mason, Georgia Southern, Maryland-Baltimore County, UNC Wilmington and Towson State. However, the meeting was postponed and – ultimately – never rescheduled after the A.D.s at George Mason and Towson resigned.
Two years later, Roberts echoed his previous statement in a June 25, 1981, story by Fayetteville Observer columnist Earl Vaughan. "We've have to get into a conference and we have to have a new field house," he said. "I think those things will come about within the next five years."
Carr had worked toward securing membership in the Trans America Athletic Conference, but a July 1983 vote by league membership was deferred. The TAAC originally planned on expanding to 12 schools, including Campbell and Georgia State, but when the 12th (unnamed in a July 25, 1983 Campbell news release) program withdrew, the league decided to defer a proposed two division format.
The desire of Carr and the Campbell administration to compete against programs located closer in proximity to Buies Creek is completely understood. At the time of the TAAC decision, the league membership included Arkansas-Little Rock, Georgia State (Atlanta), Georgia Southern (Statesboro), Mercer (Macon, Ga.), Samford (Birmingham, Ala.), Centenary (Shreveport, La.), Hardin-Simmons (Abilene, Texas), Houston Baptist, Nicholls State (Thibodaux, La.) and Northwestern State (Natchitoches, La.).
Less than one month after the TAAC decision, The Fayetteville Times reported that Campbell committed to join four other schools to form the Big South Conference.
"For now, we are totally committed to this thing as are the other schools," Carr told Webster Lupton of the Times. "But, if for instance, the Southern Conference came along and said they were going to drop the football (requirement) and were interested in us, you can bet we'd show interest. That's not saying we're going out and looking elsewhere because we're committed to the new league."
Augusta (Ga.), Baptist (now Charleston Southern), Campbell, Coastal Carolina and Winthrop committed to the new league and Armstrong State, Radford and UNC Asheville joined later in the year.
On Oct. 27, 1984, Campbell finished as runner-up to Baptist in the first Big South men's cross country championship. The Camels then claimed the inaugural Big South men's soccer title on Nov. 10 of that year with a 2-0 victory over Winthrop at Radford, Va.
That 1984 mens' soccer championship was the first of what is now 127 conference regular season and tournament titles for Fighting Camel teams in the first 49 years of its Division I era.
In addition to men's cross country and soccer, league championships also started in men's golf, men's tennis and baseball during the 1984-85 season, while the first Big South basketball tournament was held in 1986. The following year, Campbell's women's teams embarked on their Division I era when the Big South began sponsoring women's championships in 1986-87.
50 Years in Division I
Women's Empowerment Spotlight: Jade Potter (Sept. 17, 2026)
Tales from the Creek podcast (Sept. 12, 2026) Leanne Plum Mann '86
Sixkiller: A Sooner's journey to the Creek (Sept. 3, 2026)
Tales from the Creek podcast (Sept. 1, 2026) Joe Spinks '94
Tales from the Creek podcast (Aug. 14, 2026) Evan Darm '15
Women's Empowerment Spotlight: Hailey Heyvelt (Aug. 12, 2026)
50 Years in Division I – a yearlong celebration (July 29, 2026)
Tales from the Creek podcast (July 24, 2026) Frankie Delconte '84
Tales from the Creek podcast (July 10, 2026) Juha Miettinen '91
Women's Empowerment Spotlight: Caitlyn Boucher (July 7, 2026)
Camels impress in first three years as CAA member (July 2, 2026)
