In a game against Albemarle during the 1965-66 season, South Rowan High School junior Diane Horton took full advantage of a rule that had only recently let a handful of girls play the entire court, and scored 23 points in a 45-38 win. Diane Horton Deal, who became one of South Rowan's first true scoring stars in that early full-court "rover" era of girls basketball, died on July 13, 2026, at age 76.

She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1949, though both of her parents were Rowan County natives. Her father, Lonnie Horton, worked as a machinist at Cone Mills and served as a China Grove alderman, and died in his fifties. Her mother, Ola Mae Winecoff Horton, lived to 80 and died in 2008.

By her senior year at South Rowan, Class of 1967, Horton was among the conference's most productive scorers under coach Joyce Roseman Wilhelm. The rover format freed two players per team from the half-court restrictions still governing the rest of the game and let them play both ends of the floor, and Horton made full use of the room it gave her. She scored 342 points and averaged 15.5 a game that season, finished second in South Piedmont Conference scoring, and reached 20 points six times, including a 22-point effort in a double-overtime loss to Davie County and a 48-34 win over Albemarle, according to the Salisbury Post. She was voted Most Athletic Girl in her senior class, served as sports editor of the school yearbook, the Southerner, sang in chorus, and represented South Rowan as a Girls State delegate.

She married Larry Deal, a South Rowan graduate from the Class of 1966 who returned to his alma mater and spent decades there as a football, track, and basketball coach, serving as athletic director from 1983 to 2005, the Salisbury Post reported. His 1979-80 basketball team won a South Piedmont Conference championship, and his 1983 football squad went 11-2, a school record at the time. He died on October 24, 2016.

Two of their children carried the family's ties to South Rowan forward: daughter Angie Chrismon became the school's athletic director, and son Andrew Deal became chief of the China Grove Police Department. At an October 2016 ceremony honoring her late husband, Angie Chrismon told the Salisbury Post, "It's a big South Rowan family and I wouldn't trade it for the world." Diane took part in the ceremonial coin toss that night alongside grandson Austin Chrismon, who wore his grandfather's old jersey number for the game.

Diane Horton Deal was survived by two children and five grandchildren, a family the Salisbury Post noted carried on the household's athletic tradition.

The Deal and Horton name runs through South Rowan and China Grove in ways no single box score can capture. Her husband coached three sports and ran the athletic department for more than two decades. Her daughter later held that same job. Her son now polices the town where her own father once sat on the town council. Four generations of one family left their mark on the town and its schools, across more than sixty years.