Burlington Christian Academy wins state titles in girls track, boys tennis

Burlington Christian Academy turned one spring weekend into a double crown, with the girls’ track and field team and the boys’ tennis team each bringing home North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association state championships for the Burlington school.

The girls set the pace Friday at Wingate University, where BCA won the NCISAA Division III team title with 177½ points, topping Hickory Christian’s 159. Mary Katherine Parham powered the Royals with individual wins in the 800 meters in 2:24.19 and the 1,600 in 5:23.06, while Blakely Bork took the 3,200 in 11:18.26 and Kelsey King won the shot put at 32 feet, 1½ inches. BCA also swept the 400 relay, 800 relay and 3,200 relay, the kind of across-the-board scoring that usually decides a team championship.

The boys answered Saturday at North Carolina Wesleyan in Rocky Mount, where the Royals edged top-seeded Wayne Country Day School 5-4 to claim the NCISAA Division III dual-team title and finish 17-3. Connor Pherson delivered the clincher at No. 3 singles, rallying from 9-4 down in a tiebreaker to win 11-9 after a match that went 6-2, 5-7, 11-9. Nathan Clark, Nathan Garrigan and Clayton Knavel also won singles matches, and Luke Williams teamed with Garrigan for a doubles point that kept BCA alive against the bracket’s favorite.

Together, the titles showed more than two hot streaks. They reflected a school that has spent years building a program with enough depth to win in very different sports during the same stretch of the spring calendar. That matters in a county where school identity and athletics still carry real weight, especially for families in Burlington who follow their local teams closely.

The championships also fit into a broader rise for the Royals. BCA’s first team state title in any sport came in boys’ track and field in 2023, when the Royals beat Gaston Day 75-68 at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory. Since then, the school has kept pushing its athletic profile higher, even after athletics director Rene Neff retired in spring 2024.

Neff’s tenure helped build the foundation. BCA started middle school sports in 2001 when it had no gym on campus, joined the NCISAA in 2008 as varsity sports expanded and eventually fielded 38 combined high school and middle school teams. The school says it is a 2A school by enrollment and competes in Division III for tennis and track and field, which makes these latest titles a direct measure of what Burlington Christian Academy has become: a small school with championship reach far beyond its size.