Former basketball sensation Linda Page found dead in her Yeadon home

Contemporaries of former Dobbins Tech girls' basketball sensation Linda Page, who broke Wilt Chamberlain's individual local high school scoring record when she scored 100 points against Mastbaum in February 1981, reacted with shock and fond remembrances Wednesday to her death. She was 48.

The circumstances of her death were sketchy, but several sources close to Page and her family said she died in her home in Yeadon, Delaware County, possibly of a heart attack.

It was unclear, however, when or how she died, and police in Yeadon did not have anything to officially announce Wednesday night.

The North Carolina State Athletic Department, however, posted news of Page's death on its website Wednesday afternoon. The site offered few details, and did not list a cause of death. The 5-foot-11 Page excelled for the North Carolina State Wolfpack.

Page gained national notoriety, when as a high school senior in 1981, she shattered the 90-point mark Chamberlain had set while playing for Overbrook High in 1955 against Roxborough.

"At the time she was the greatest girls' player ever out of the Public League," said Mike Flynn, who coached Page as a member of his nationally prominent Philadelphia Belles AAU program. "And since then the only other player who has accomplished more was Dawn Staley, who also played for Dobbins.

"She also became the first player to leave the city and play elsewhere, which showed she wanted a change in scenery," Flynn said of his star who started playing basketball at a church in the Kensington section of the city.

"I was at the game she scored 100," he said. "A year later, Cheryl Miller scored 105 in a high school game in California and I said, 'That's nothing. Page could have had 120 if she hadn't slowed down in the fourth quarter.' "

She also reached her 2,000th career point in the historic contest and her 48.3 scoring average as a senior is still a state high school record in Pennsylvania.

North Carolina State was a natural for Page, who chose to play for future a Hall of Fame coach, the late Kay Yow, because she had taken on the nickname "Hawkeye" after her favorite player Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney, a former Wolfpack men's star in the late 1970s.

Page, who was honored in 2008 as one of the legendary players in the history of Atlantic Coast Conference women's competition, wore Whitney's uniform No. 43, which was later retired in the women's program at N.C. State.