FEATURE: Decade-old case of missing championship ring solved (kind of) for Averett softball Hall of Famer

Mary Beth (Smith) Lequire ’16 was sitting on her couch crocheting when she got the text from a friend, “Check your Facebook Messenger!” That led her to a forwarded message asking, “Is this yours?!?”

Shortly after, Lequire received several more messages from former Averett teammates inquiring the same time.

A photo of a 2015 Averett University softball conference championship ring posted to Facebook by Sherri Brown moments earlier set into motion a partial resolution to one of Lequire’s biggest mysteries — what ever happened to her championship ring that went missing more than a decade ago?

Lequire, an Averett Athletics Hall of Famer who starred for the Cougars from 2014-16, was a huge piece of Averett’s 2015 USA South Athletic Conference championship team. She was the ace pitcher for Averett, which earned a national ranking, won the conference regular season crown and earned an at-large berth into the Division III NCAA Regional.

That fall, at Averett Athletics’ “Welcome Back” event, Lequire and her teammates were presented their championship rings on Aug. 20, 2015. Taking the team photo following the ring ceremony that night was the last time she remembers having the ring in hand. Somewhere at some point, it disappeared. 

As time passed by, Lequire always wondered what happened to her commemorative ring. Then, more than 10 years later, it popped up on Brown’s Facebook post on Feb. 3.

“I was honestly shocked,” Lequire said. “I thought there was no way I would ever see it again. I’d even thought about it occasionally over the years, wondering what I’d done with it or what happened to it. And I made occasional attempts to look for it.”

And there it was, after all this time, thanks to the power of social media.

The location of the ring was solved, but part of the mystery will have to remain just that — a mystery.

Sherri Brown and her family came across the ring recently following the death of her sister-in-law Carol Brown, who passed away last April. As they were going through her sister-in-law’s belongings at the home in Burlington, North Carolina, Carol’s husband Dean found the ring and really wanted to find its owner. 

“He really wanted to find the person it belonged to because he was sure that they would really want it,” Sherri Brown said. “He’s real tender-hearted, so he wanted the person to have it.”

Sherri Brown posted several photos of the ring. One showed the top that said “2015 USA South Champions engraved around a blue stone with the AU logo in the center. One side had “Smith” engraved for Lequire’s maiden name and the other side showed Averett’s 35-5 overall record that season.

Sherri Brown said her post was up for only about 15 minutes before it was matched to Lequire. It brought Dean Brown to tears.

“We just thought that was so awesome,” she said. “It was neat that we found her so quick — that’s social media now!”

Dean Brown doesn’t know how Carol ended up in possession of Lequire’s championship ring. Maybe she found it somewhere on the ground and picked it up. The family could only speculate that maybe Carol had found it at Burlington’s JCPenney department store, where she worked for more than 20 years. Lequire is originally from the Elon, North Carolina, area, so maybe that was the connection. Sadly, no one but Carol Brown will ever know.

Lequire is curious as well, but she’s just happy to have the ring back after all these years. She connected with the Browns on Feb. 6 to retrieve it.

“Aside from my wedding ring, it’s the most meaningful ring I own,” Lequire said. “It’s represents years of hard work and dedication, as well as how far true cohesive teamwork can take you.”

Lequire finished her career as one of the top pitchers and hitters in program history. The two-time USA South Conference Pitcher of the Year went 53-21 in the circle with a 2.21 earned run average with 430 strikeouts in 472.2 innings pitched. She ranks first all-time in Averett's softball record book in a number of career and single-season categories. She was equally as impressive at the plate, ranking high in a number of the program’s record book’s offensive categories. She was a two-time NFCA All-Region selection, two-time all-state selection and three-time all-conference performer while also being named to the 2016 USA South All-Tournament Team. She also earned academic all-conference accolades and was inducted into the Averett Athletics Hall of Fame on Oct. 8, 2022.

After receiving the initial message about her ring being located, Lequire immediately ran to share the news with her husband, Tyler. Then she texted former teammate and fellow Averett Hall of Famer Taylor Dix Paschal ’16 to talk about how the ring got lost years ago and how crazy it was that it had been found.

Maybe even more crazy is that, as Lequire and the Browns talked, they realized that Lequire had given pitching lessons to Sherri’s cousin’s daughter at one point.

It all just proves that even in an expansive network like Facebook, it’s truly a small world — albeit a mysterious one sometimes.