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FORD
WILMINGTON – The women’s basketball staff at UNC-Wilmington added another coach with Greater Hickory area ties on Friday.
The university announced head coach Karen Barefoot, a former head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne University, has hired former Freedom High star Ali Ford as an assistant coach.
Barefoot has been at UNC-W for one season (12-19), coming there after six seasons as head coach at Old Dominion. She was LRU’s head coach for four seasons, starting in 2001-02, and the Bears went 70-44.
Ford has been a graduate assistant the past two seasons at Old Dominion, one of them under Barefoot. She played for Barefoot at Elon from 2009-13.
Ford, a guard, set a Burke County high school record with 2,502 points as a four-year starter for the Patriots. Her honors include Female Athlete of the Year in 2009 from the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA), and she was selected as one of the top 100 females in NCHSAA history by a select panel.
As a college player, Ford made All-Southern Conference all four years at Elon and was the league’s Freshman of the Year in 2010. She is still the second-leading scorer in women’s basketball at Elon.
Before coaching, Ford played for Team USA in international competition in 2015 and as a pro in Iceland in 2016.