Shaw University and North Carolina A&T are feeling a loss after former Aggies basketball standout and longtime Bears athletic director Dr. Alfonza Carter passed away on Wednesday.
Carter served as a coach and athletic director at Shaw for 40 years before retiring in 2020. Among the highlights of his coaching tenure was leading the women’s and men’s basketball teams to respectability, including a CIAA Southern Division title for the Lady Bears and the first 20-win season for the men’s team in nearly two decades.
While serving as athletic director, the Lady Bears won the 2012 NCAA Division II national championship for women’s basketball, becoming the first CIAA team — and HBCU — to do so since Hampton in 1988.
He also oversaw the ascent of the Bears’ tennis program as head coach and athletic director, with 22 CIAA championship trophies to their credit. He also helped bring football back to Shaw in 2003 after a 30-year absence.
As an athlete, Carter was an All-American basketball player at North Carolina A&T and was a 1994 inductee into that school’s Hall of Fame.
