dell curry

Augusta County native Dell Curry. Photo: David Allio/Icon Sportswire

Dell Curry (Fort Defiance) and Ralph Sampson (Harrisonburg) were both born at old Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg, both stayed in state to star in college (Virginia Tech, Virginia, respectively) and combined to score more than 20,000 points in the NBA.

(Steph Curry and LeBron James were born in the same Akron hospital and have combined to score more than 67,000 points in the NBA – but that is another story.)

Sampson led the ‘Hoos to the Final Four in 1981, after winning the NIT crown his freshman year. “We felt we deserved to be in the NCAA Tournament” in 1980, he said in an interview in 2021.

While Curry and Sampson are the most prominent hoopsters from Augusta County and Rockingham County high schools, several other local graduates have played at the pro level overseas.

Here is a look at some of them

  • Cory Alexander (Waynesboro) Alexander, who played at Flint Hill and Oak Hill after Waynesboro, was a first-round pick out of Virginia in 1995 by San Antonio. He also played in the NBA for Denver, Orlando and Charlotte, and in Italy. He made the transition to basketball analyst after his playing career.
  • Joey Allen (TA) Allen had a standout career at Randolph-Macon in Ashland, leading the Yellow Jackets to three national tournaments. Allen then played 15 years in France, Sweden and Norway, according to the school. A 1977 graduate of Randy Mac, he went into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2017.
  • Pee Wee Barber (Harrisonburg) A guard with Allen Iverson-like flair, he went to JUCO at Ferrum before starring at Florida State. He was drafted by Portland in the fourth round in 1987 but never played in the NBA. Off-the-court problems, namely drug distribution, landed him in jail for a long stretch, according to published reports.

  • kirby burkholder

    TA grad Kirby Burkholder was the CAA Player of the Year as a senior at JMU.

    Kirby Burkholder (Turner Ashby) A walk-on at JMU, she worked her way up the rotation and was the CAA Player of the Year in 2014 as a senior. After a tryout with the Washington Mystics, she played in Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Puerto Rico before retiring in 2024. “Major money issues,” including late payments, she said of her time in Poland. She has worked in the recreation department in Loudoun County as a program coordinator. Burkholder will go into the JMU Hall of Fame on Aug. 29. (Note: Burkholder is the daughter of this writer’s first cousin).

  • Lyn Burkholder (Broadway) He never played pro ball, but Burkholder was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA in the first round in 1967 after playing at the University of South Carolina. “That was a big jump” from Broadway to South Carolina, he said in a 2020 interview. He is most likely a distant relative of Kirby Burkholder.
  • Tyler Crawford (Staunton) After starring at Staunton High, Crawford played for the Hoyas of Georgetown through 2008 and then in Slovenia and Serbia – two former members of Yugoslavia where hoops is a big deal. Crawford scored more than 2,000 points with more than 1,000 rebounds for the late Paul Hatcher in high school.

  • daniel dixon

    Daniel Dixon played a post-graduate season at Fishburne Military Academy, then became an all-CAA player with the Tribe of William & Mary. Photo: William & Mary Athletics

    Daniel Dixon (Fishburne Military School) Dixon starred at Langley High in McLean. He was lightly recruited, so he spent a post-grad year in Waynesboro and was an All-CAA standout at William & Mary, ending his college career in 2017. Dixon played in the G League and in France, and in 2024 was named an assistant coach with Oklahoma City in the NBA. The shooting guard signed with the Boston Celtics out of college but didn’t play in an NBA contest.

  • Stephanie Howard (Harrisonburg) A standout at Radford and Hall of Famer there, she played nine years in Switzerland. Since then, she has worked for several years as the Lucy Simms Center supervisor with Harrisonburg Parks and Recreation. Howard said she had never been overseas until she went to Switzerland. “I lived in Lausanne for five years and then in Wetzikon for four years. The best part was that it provided me an opportunity to live out a dream of playing the sport I loved, professionally … pre- WNBA! Also, the opportunity to live abroad and experience a different country, learn a new language, and meet new friends,” she wrote to AFP in July.
  • Justin Kier (Spotswood) Perhaps the best player to come out of Grottoes since Dell Curry, he played in college at George Mason, Georgia and Arizona. The guard played his first season overseas this past season for Heroes Den Boesch, annually one of the top clubs in the Netherlands. Heroes won the Dutch Cup this past March. In July, Kier played for a group of JMU alums (The Founding Fathers) in Harrisonburg in The Basketball Tournament.
  • Kristi Tolliver (Harrisonburg) As a freshman guard, she helped Maryland win the NCAA title in 2006. After that she played in the WNBA for Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington and overseas in Israel, Turkey, Hungary and Russia. The daughter of a former NBA referee, Toliver was named an assistant coach with Phoenix in the WNBA in 2024. She was very involved in social issues after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and she sat out that WNBA season as a player. “The women in this league have always been the leaders in doing the right things,” she said in an interview in 2020. “I am extremely proud to be part of that.”
  • Jerry Venable (Booker T. Washington) From Staunton, Venable was an All-American at Ferrum in 1968 and then played at Kansas State. Venable, who averaged 15.5 points per contest in two seasons at Kansas State, was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors in the sixth round in the 1970 NBA Draft but didn’t play in the NBA. He spent several years playing for the Harlem Globetrotters, and he went into the Ferrum Hall of Fame in 2018.

  • john wetzel

    John Wetzel (right) is the only graduate of Wilson Memorial to play in the NBA. Born in Waynesboro, he went to Saint Francis in Staunton before heading to Fishersville for high school. A former assistant and head coach in the NBA, Wetzel and his wife Diane (left) split their time between Hawaii and Arizona. Wetzel turns 81 in October.

    John Wetzel (Wilson Memorial) Dell Curry is not the only Augusta County product who played in the NBA after starring for the Hokies. Wetzel, born in Waynesboro, was an eighth-round pick by the Los Angeles Lakers out of Blacksburg in 1966. He played in the NBA for the Lakers, Phoenix Suns and Atlanta Hawks before he began his coaching career. Wetzel was an assistant one season at Virginia Tech before becoming an assistant in the NBA – and he was the head coach with the Suns in 1987-88.

Cool Lenny Rosenbluth story

Lenny Rosenbluth (Staunton Military Academy) A New York City native, he starred at North Carolina in college and then was a first-round pick of Philadelphia in 1957. He played for the Warriors for two years after leading the Tar Heels to a perfect season and national title in 1956-1957.

Rosenbluth passed in 2022 at the age of 89; he is in the college basketball Hall of Fame. According to basketballreference.com, he went to Staunton Military Academy during the 1952-1953 season after attending James Monroe High in the Bronx. Kirby Dean, the former boys’ basketball coach at Waynesboro High and ex-head coach at EMU, met Rosenbluth at the ACC Tournament in 2012.

“Regina (Kirby’s wife) and I had just picked up food inside the arena, and when we looked for a table to sit, everything was completely full,” Dean, also a former VMI assistant, wrote to AFP in late July. “There was one table with four chairs in which two of the chairs were occupied by an older couple fully clad in Carolina Blue attire.  Mind you……Regina and I were fully decked out in our Duke Blue outfits.  I looked at the gentleman, and he looked back at me, and neither knew what to say.  He broke the ice by saying, ‘I guess there are worst things than having lunch with Dookies.’ We both laughed!

“It wasn’t until we sat down and began to chat that I realized it was Lenny Rosenbluth. We had a GREAT conversation. He told us all about his Carolina days, and I told him about our improbable run at EMU (to the Elite Eight in D3 in 2010). He really enjoyed hearing about my coaching career, and I really enjoyed hearing about his days at Carolina. We probably spent a good 30 minutes with no breaks in the conversation. I was so sad when I saw he had passed several years back. I actually made a Facebook post about it telling that story of how we met.”

Up next?

tyler nickel virginia tech

Tyler Nickel at Virginia Tech. Photo: ACC

So, who will be the next pro player from Augusta or Rockingham? One candidate is Tyler Nickel (East Rockingham), who began his college career at North Carolina and has since then played at Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt. The 6-foot-7 Nickel averaged 10.4 points per game last season at Vanderbilt for coach Mark Byington, the previous mentor at JMU. It seems a career in Europe, at the least, is very likely for Nickel if he wants to go on that route.

Another Euro prospect: Carmelo Pacheco (Spotswood), who averaged nearly 10 points per contest last season as Mount St. Mary’s made the NCAA Tournament. He was injured and didn’t play in March Madness and is transferring to Central Florida, according to social media posts.

Did we miss anyone? If so, contact [email protected].

Notes 

  • Sue Blauch (Eastern Mennonite) She didn’t play pro hoops, but the former EMHS and EMU player was an official in the WNBA and in major events overseas before becoming the supervisor of WNBA officials in 2018. “I’ve seen WNBA games begin to lose their integrity,” Blauch said during a press briefing in July with national reporters. “Some of them are starting to look more like boxing matches than basketball games.”
  • From www.ranker.com, the top six players from Virginia: Allen Iverson, Moses Malone, Alonzo Mourning, Grant Hill, Ralph Sampson and Dell Curry.
  • TA grad Raevin Washington is on the 2025-2026 basketball roster for Duquesne, a Division I member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. Dukes’ coach Dan Burt’s wife, Kata, is from Hungary and played at West Virginia and UNC Wilmington. Burt has sent several of his players to the pro ranks in Europe. Washington is related to Ralph Sampson, according to the Duquesne website.
  • Another member of the 2025 JMU Hall of Fame class is Roanoke’s Kevin Munson (baseball), a Cave Spring grad who reached the Triple-A level with Arizona and Seattle as a pitcher. He was drafted out of JMU by Arizona in 2010 in the fourth round.

David Driver is a Harrisonburg native who played baseball at Turner Ashby, Harrisonburg Legion Post 27, EMU (one light-hitting season) and for Clover Hill in the RCBL. He is the co-author of “From Tidewater to the Shenandoah: Snapshots from Virginia’s Rich Baseball Legacy,” which is available on the websites of Amazon and Barnes and Noble and at daytondavid.com. He was the sports editor of the Daily News-Record from 2019-21 and worked for the paper in the 1980s. He is also the author of “Hoop Dreams in Europe: American Basketball Players Building Careers Overseas,” which is available on Amazon. The inside design of the book was done by AFP.