Submitted Photo: Nancy Querry Stepp, fourth from left in the front row, is shown with the 1955 Epworth High School basketball team. She averaged well over 20 points per game during each of her four years in high school. 

By: Mike Harper | Special to The Citizen

2026 Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame inductee Nancy Querry Stepp grew up in the bucolic community of Epworth, Georgia, during the middle part of the twentieth century. The community consisted of a number of neatly kept middle class homes, two churches, a school and the Vestal family general store. There were not many activities to entertain the young men and women of the community.

Nancy filled most of her leisure time shooting a basketball. She devoted hours perfecting her two chief basketball weapons, a two-hand set shot from outside and a hook shot from closer to the basket. She played the game before the jump shot gained popularity in a game much different from the women’s game of today. In Nancy’s day, women’s basketball was a six versus six player game. At any one time, each team had six active players, three defensive players on one side of the center line and three offensive players on the other side. The three ‘guards’ and three ‘forwards’ were not permitted to cross the center line during play. There was neither a shot clock nor a three point shot.

During Nancy’s freshman and sophomore years, she competed in basketball for Epworth High School. At that time, the autumn of 1953 through the end of the 1954-55 school year, Fannin County had three high schools, Epworth, Blue Ridge and Fannin County High at Morganton. The high school at McCaysville burned in May of 1953 and, for athletic purposes, McCaysville High students attended Epworth High for two years. In the fall of 1955, a school consolidation plan was implemented and students from Epworth, McCaysville and Blue Ridge attended the new West Fannin High.

Two significant events occurred when the McCaysville students entered high school at Epworth in the fall of 1953. First, Jim Haymore, the girls basketball coach at McCaysville moved to the same position at Epworth. Haymore moved on to West Fannin when that school opened, so Nancy played under the tutelage of Haymore throughout her high school career. Second, Peggy Thompson of McCaysville joined the Epworth team in 1953. Peggy was a formidable offensive player, so opponents were forced to contend with the Querry/Thompson duo for four years.

Nancy Querry led her team in scoring throughout her elementary and high school years. She averaged well over 20 points per game in each of her four high school years as a starting forward. 

In the first game ever played by West Fannin, Nancy lit up the scoreboard for 31 points in a game against Murray County. She later posted 35 points in another game at Murray County in a game played in January of 1957. 

The Atlanta Journal, in a January 1955 review of West Fannin’s first year of basketball had this to say about Nancy: “Miss Querry is an accomplished performer on the hardwood. She has an average of 30 points per game; three fifths of the points scored by the team”. 

Other testimonials supplied by local sports dignitaries came from her high school peers and local obervers included: 

•Classmate and West Fannin football and basketball player Benny Ballew observed that, “Nancy was a team leader and one of the best basketball players in Georgia”.

•Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame member Ron Hartness, who was one year behind Nancy in school, says that, “She was impossible to guard. If there had been a three point shot during her career she would have averaged more than 30 points per game”.

•J.J. King, the legendary star of Copperhill High School and semi-pro basketball said that, “I would go anywhere to watch Nancy Querry play basketball”.

There were not a lot of awards for girls in athletics in the 1950s, but Nancy’s classmates named her and Peggy Thompson as the Most Athletic seniors in the West Fannin graduating class of 1957.

After graduation, Nancy married her classmate, the late Jack Stepp. She and Jack had two children and six grandchildren. Nancy earned a degree in Dietetic and Institutional Management from the University of Georgia and worked at Emory Hospital in Atlanta and Athens Regional Hospital. Nancy now makes her home in Dalton. She fills her time with church and family activities.

Nancy Querry Stepp is a pioneer in Fannin County athletics and was arguably the first star-quality female athlete following the county wide school consolidation program of 1955. She is a valued member of the Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame.