‘I am Winthrop’: Zeta Sistare, legendary sports fan of Rock Hill school, dies at 88
When the subject is Winthrop University basketball, a program that has at times been the talk of America’s Cinderella sports stories, no one ever was a bigger fan than Zeta Sistare.
“I am Winthrop,” she would say, and nobody ever said it was not so.
Sistare died Friday at age 88, according to school officials and an obituary. But her cheers at basketball games and other sports will always be remembered.
She wore Winthrop hats she made herself. She always donned a handmade Winthrop vest. She had her same seat in the Winthrop Coliseum in Rock Hill, Section 123, Row L, at the basketball games.
She cheered.
Loud.
She would stand during games and yell, and nobody ever told this lady to sit down.
The Winthrop alum from the class of 1957 went to hundreds of games of Winthrop sports teams, many of them with her late husband, Joe. She traveled across the country to watch. And she, up into her 80s, climbed a ladder and helped cut down the nets when the team won Big South conference men’s basketball titles.
In a 2018 Winthrop campus magazine article about Sistare and a student being big fans, Sistare was asked: ‘Do you consider yourself Winthrop’s number one fan?’
She responded; “Well, I kind of know that is a fact.”
Sistare worked at the school for more than 20 years and established an athletic training endowment in 2018.
Winthrop athletic director Chuck Rey said Sistare will always be a part of sports at the school.
“Zeta had a great love for Winthrop and was a wonderful supporter of Eagles athletics,” Rey said in a statement. “Even as she aged, she found ways to make it to the Coliseum. She will be greatly missed in the Coliseum. We will find a way to honor her. We know she will be looking over us this season.”
Sistare’s funeral is today at 3 p.m. at Unity Presbyterian Church in Fort Mill.
