A $200,000 prize makes a brother-sister duo from Kings Mountain the most recent Cleveland County residents to win big playing Powerball. Ricky Ware bought a Quick Pick ticket for himself and his sister, Sonja Davis, at Battleground Petroleum on York Road in Kings Mountain.

Ware found out the ticket matched all five white balls in the Wednesday, Aug. 17 drawing the next day when he checked the lottery's website. “It's exciting. You start reading the numbers off and they start matching,” he said. “I knew it’d be a pretty good prize, but I didn't know it’d be that.”

Davis and Ware said they plan to pay some bills with their winnings, which totaled $68,000 apiece after taxes. “We’re going to keep playing,” added Davis, who said she and her brother also buy Mega Millions tickets.

The win marks the 10th Powerball prize of $10,000 or more for Cleveland County. In 2009, Jeff Wilson of Kings Mountain became North Carolina’s second Powerball jackpot winner when he won $88.1 million. He elected to take the $42.4 million lump sum payout.

Since the lottery began through June 30, 2010, Cleveland County players won more than $66.2 million in prizes, boosted by Wilson’s jackpot win. During the same time frame, local retailers earned more than $3 million in commissions on ticket sales and Cleveland County education programs received more than $19.3 million in lottery funds. By law, those funds benefit teacher salaries, school construction, need-based college scholarships and prekindergarten programs.

To date, the N.C. Education Lottery has raised more than $2 billion for the initiatives it serves statewide.