For sisters April and Unique Cromartie, growing up under their parents, Alma and Jackie, meant being active in sports from a young age.
“We were very sports-oriented,” Unique recalled. “My dad (Jackie) always kept us into something. We’ve ridden horses since we were little girls, but playing basketball, volleyball, track, sports has always been a passion for all of us. Anything that we could be in that kept us busy during the summer, my mom and dad kept us busy.”
When April first arrived at Union in 1994, however, she wasn’t primarily interested in basketball.
“I was a benchwarmer; I didn’t know how to play basketball when I got here,” April explained. “I couldn’t even catch the ball. But Mrs. (Julie) Hunter, because I got tall over the summer, she told me that if I could get her some rebounds, she’d let me play. She started teaching me how to rebound, and she let me play. Without them, I don’t know what I would have been playing, because I wanted to be a cheerleader, but my dad said I was going to play basketball. From there, I learned when the ball came off the rim, I’d get after it so I could stay in the game.”
By the time Unique joined her the following year, April had established herself as one of the key pieces of what Hunter was building at Union.
“It was really fun and disciplined,” Unique said. “Coach Hunter didn’t play; that was something that she instilled in us. If you missed free throws, you ran. We were very disciplined. We were in shape after school; you did your homework until it was time for us to go to practice. Then, when it was time to practice, there was no playing around. She always told us, ‘You play as you practice.’ If you come in here and you mess around, that’s how you’re going to play on the court. So that was the time to put everything to the side and focus on what we needed to do.”
Joined by their sister, Crystal Robinson, in 1997, the Spartans found their stride. The team finished 27-1, with its only loss coming in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association state championship game.
“I felt like we should have won the game,” April expressed. “We had some judgment, but I think, because it was such a heartbreak, the only thing I remember is losing the game and being heartbroken. I remember coach Register telling us on the way home that we need to carry that hurt and that pain into the next year and hold our heads up. I remember crying for days. Like my uniform was lying on the floor in the bedroom, and I just cried because we wanted to win that game. That next year, we did bring that fire back with us.”
Unique added that the ride home on the bus was in “complete silence.”
During the offseason leading into 1998, the team realized what it had left on the table.
“We worked together, my dad had a full court board at our house, and the team came together,” Unique described. “We would all go down there, practice, play, and eat together. Everything we did was as a group. So when the season came up, it was right back to it. It’s like we never left. Everybody felt like this was our year. We missed it last year, but this is our year.”
The entire group wasn’t going to miss its chance.
“I remember the anticipation of going into that year, knowing that this is supposed to be our year. I was gonna make sure we didn’t mess it up,” April emphasized. “We made sure our grades were up and practiced on time. We had some goof-offs, but Mrs. Hunter made sure we ran for those. It felt like to me, we had a purpose, and we weren’t going to let it pass us by like we did the year before.”
In 1998, a different feeling arose compared to years past.
“We had fun with it,” April said. “It wasn’t like a job. For me, I guess since I played for so long, sometimes the game would feel like a job when you were with teams that bickered a lot. But it didn’t feel like that in ‘98. It felt like we were having fun. I remember not wanting to come out of the game when there was 45 seconds left, and she was going to sub us out on the second free throw. We would purposely miss a free throw on purpose so she couldn’t sub us out. We had to do suicides, but we didn’t care. We were having fun with it.”
That fun led the Spartans all the way back to the 1A state final, where they captured the elusive championship.
“That was surreal, because the last team that had won it was Tanya Sampson’s team (last state champs team for Union in girls basketball),” April recalled. “I had gone to her camp in my ninth-grade year. I didn’t have any shoes, so I had to go to Walmart to get some, and my feet ran out of them. So she gave me her sneakers, put me up on the rim, and I took a picture of her sneakers. I remembered her, so when we won, I was like, I did what she did when she was here years ago. We had fun on the bus; that was cool, and they treated us like royalty. We cried happy tears. To come back to Union after winning, everybody was so excited. They weren’t as excited as us, but everybody was excited about us winning.”
For the sisters, being able to bring back the title wasn’t just because they were family; it was also because the entire team felt that way.
“Mrs. Hunter instilled that in us,” Unique emphasized. “We prayed together, ate together, played together, practiced, argued, like all of us were like sisters. It wasn’t just your biological sister; we were all like sisters. It was crazy; we shared almost everything.”
Even when they had moments of disagreement, they found a way to come together.
“People think it was all good with that team, but it wasn’t,” April said. “But one thing Mrs. Hunter did was stop us. She let us know that we could argue all we want in the locker room or outside of the lines, but once we get on the court, we had to let all that go. Eventually, we got it. I think that’s one thing that the kids are missing. They take it on the court and are mad at each other. But you have to let it go. That’s how sports have to be played if you want to be successful.”
Today, both are parents to children who attend Union — Tobias for Unique and Jayleen for April — and attend as many games as they can to support them and their dreams. But as they walk through the halls of Union, memories of the 1998 championship still linger in their minds and conversations.
“We talk to them about it all the time,” April said with a smirk. “Especially when the boys want a challenge, we’re always gonna talk about it.”