In this heartfelt clip, Coach David Green shares inspiring stories from his 49-year coaching career. From Susan Dixon’s incredible track achievements to a young athlete’s journey from behavior issues to success, these tales highlight the power of perseverance and the importance of fighting for students. Join us as we explore the triumphs and challenges faced by these remarkable athletes. #Coaching #Inspiration #TrackAndField #golf
Over the course of my 49-year coaching career, at several stops along the way, particularly early in my career, I coached track, both boys and girls. When I coached track at MCBY High School in South Carolina, we had a girl, Susan Dixon, was an outstanding runner. She lived out near the golf course, which was a good seven miles or so from the school. She ran home from school most days when the weather was nice. On the weekends and offse, her running practice was to run the golf course. And while running the course, she would pick up all the lost balls she could find and she’d give them to the coaches. Now, we were really bad golfers and we didn’t make much money. So, getting bags of golf balls from Susan was a great help. The only coach we ever had in our group who was actually a decent golfer was Bruce Dingler. Bruce was serious enough as a golfer that he really didn’t need the slightly used golf balls. You know, Bruce is the kind of guy that like he plays at Pinehurst, that sort of thing. But Russell Bird and Dennis Farmer, myself, we definitely did need the golf balls. When our girls coach Lori Roberts joined us, she used them, but she didn’t hit them far enough to lose them other than when she insisted she could hit the ball over the water. She couldn’t. Final count on her. hitting golf balls over the water was one over and a hundred in the water. But you got to say she did believe in herself. Coach Farmer, who was known to everyone as Fox, was big on playing with found balls. In fact, nearly every time we played, he came back with more balls than he started out with. That’s because every time he hit a ball into an unplayable area, he spent at least 10 minutes looking for all the other balls hit into the area and left by golfers less intent on finding lost balls. Fox often came out scratched and blooded by his searches in the weeds and bramble, but he came out victorious with pocket stuff with new golf ball. Coach Bird had no intention of going in weeds. He would instead sit in the golf cart, drink a beer while Fox was searching, grumbling the whole time, “Damn it, Fox.” Bird brought an 18 pack of beer every time we played. One for each hole, he said, except that he would bring 18 even if we were only going to play nine holes. That was a good hole. That calls for a beer, Bird would say. Or that hole sucked. I need a beer. We had an assistant football coach we played with a few times right after I got to Mackie. But after he turned over the golf cart by trying to turn it, going full speed down a steep hill with us yelling the whole time to slow down. We eliminated him from the group. Nobody was willing to share a cart with him, especially me who was in the cart when he turned it over. But I’m straying from the main story which is about track, not golf. So Susan was so good that she won the 800 meter, the 1600 meters, and the 3200 meters at the state track meet her senior year. She also finished sixth in the long jump. She would have done better in the long jump, an event she won at every other meet. But instead of doing field events and then running events like she’d done all year, they put the long jump after she had run three distance events. And she’s a little tired by then. At the upper state track meet where athletes qualify for the state meet. She ran into an issue. She had a track scholarship, but she had yet to meet the SAT qualification for admission since she hadn’t taken the test. I don’t think the idea of a track scholarship crossed her mind until she got one. There was one last testing date to take the SAT and meet the score in order to get scholarship. Problem was that the SAT was the same day as the upper state meet. I found out the SAT was being given at the same school as the upper state meet. Ha. So, we changed her SAT location to there so she wouldn’t miss the meet. But there was still a problem with the long jump. Field events would be held prior to the running events. They would in fact begin while she was up in the school building taking the SAT. So, I called the meet director to determine if she had to be present for the start of the event. He said no. Long as she got the event before her name was called for her final jump, she could jump, but she’d only get whatever jumps she was present for. So, I instructed her to wear her uniform to the test once it was over to get from the building to the event as fast as she could. As it turned out, she’s going to have to get to the event even faster than we had imagined. As we approached the final round of jumps for all the participants, I sent someone to the school building to tell her she came out of the test that she was going to have to run to the field. She had no time to walk down. It was nearly her turn. I saw her running full speed from the building to the track with her shoes in her hand. She got to the event site as her name was called. She pulled off her sweat. She put on her shoes and without having a chance to measure her steps or get her mark, she took a run and jumped, taking off well behind the board, but still winning the event. Now, during the regular season, when opposing teams didn’t have a girls team, as was sometimes the case with small schools, she would run with the boys. She would outrun all the boys from the other team. At one point, a meet director called me and told me she could no longer run in the boys events at his school. He said other teams were refusing to come if she was going to come and run because their boys were embarrassed to lose to her. Now, she was never challenged at regular season girls meet. She would run off in the 1600 and 3200 lap the field and then she would stop and encourage her teammates as they came by before taking off and passing them again. It didn’t matter if she was running against small schools or big schools. Nobody challenged her. At the same upper state track meet where Susie made her jump, another issue arose as one of the team members came to me extremely upset. Upset with me and with the people running the track meet. Now, she was not upset for herself, but for her sister, who she was sure was being taken advantage of. I was letting it happen. You see, her sister ran the 400 m. And in this meet, she ran from the inside lane in the staggered start that they used for the 400 meters. How do you expect our sister to win when you keep letting those people give everybody else a head start? I I really couldn’t explain staggered start to her. Now, the upper state track meet was also the only time each year we would encounter athletes from the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind. Every year, same thing for those attending the meet for the first time. I would get the question, how are they gonna run if they’re blind? Are they just gonna run into us? And every year I gave the same explanation. Some of their athletes were deaf, not blind. Others who were running were legally blind. But that did not mean they could not see anything at all. And every year the school for the deaf and blind would have some amazing athletes competing in that track meet. Another year we had another great athlete who was one of those kids you start working with Ethan at first, you’re just not sure if he’s going to be successful. Not because of his athletic ability, but because he’s got a few behavior issues. When he was young, he could be hell on wheels at time. Sometimes he struggled to behave at school and he had problems sometimes on the athletic field as well. But every day showed up for practices, every sport. He worked as hard as he could to learn the sport. He was as raw an athlete as you come across. But he not only improved his athletic skills, his behavior got better and better. It was obvious he wanted to do the right things. Sometimes he just didn’t quite know how. the first football scrimmage he ever participated in. We put him in late in the scrimmage, having no idea what he might do. The first time he touched the ball, he took off on a 30-yard run, but as soon as he was tackled, he got up fighting. When we got to him, he was yelling, “He knocked me down.” It was definitely a learning process, but he became a great success story. became a mild student and a valuable member of several athletic teams. He was the kind of guy you wanted to fight for. His senior year, after I was no longer coaching track, I moved on to golf. He went to state track meet, participated in several events. Even though I was the athletic director, I had to stay at school that day and couldn’t attend the meet. When they got back from the meet, he was in tears and he was as dejected as any athlete could be. He told me he was disqualified at the meet and had let the team down. He couldn’t explain to me why he was disqualified. Track coach explained that he had been disqualified after winning the long jump due to a uniform violation. It took me a while to get the whole story. The young man ran on a relay team and each member of the team had an identical un asked the coach why those particular shorts and he said those were the ones they had all brought with them that day and that they had worn them most of the year because they like them better than the regular track shorts. I rechecked the rule book. Find no violation in the rule book. The book didn’t say the shorts had to say track. He had on a schoolisssued uniform. The only uniform requirement for the long jump. They had identical schools uniforms for the relay matching what he wore for the long jump. No one had said a word about uniforms all day. What made it worse, sent me over the edge was they told me that after the long jump, they had the awards ceremony for that event. You know, like they do at the Olympics, and he put Perry on the stand, put his first place medal around his neck. Some coach later complained about the uniform and the meet director found the young man and took his medal back. All this kid had been through in his life, all that he had overcome and how far he had come. There’s no way I was letting this stand. The South Carolina League offices were closed by the time all of this had been recanted to me. First thing the next morning, I was on the phone with the executive director of the High School League. He was not aware of exactly what had happened, but I gave him an earful. I told him what I had been told. He said he didn’t think there was anything to be done, that the meat director had made a ruling, but that he would check to get their version and then get back to me. When he did an hour or so later, he said there was in fact nothing he could do. The MI director had ruled the uniform was illegal and that he was disqualified and that was that. I proceeded to tell him the hell it was. There’s no way I was going to let it go. I would appeal the decision. I would go to the press and I would get a lawyer if needed. Told him this kid’s story. This was not just some officials decision. This was a correctable situation. The executive director told me the kid from the other team had been given a medal and others had their medals and ribbons changed and that points had been awarded. Meat by rule was officially over. Told him I didn’t care about point or the meat. I was only concerned with the way this kid was treated. He did nothing wrong. He broke no rules. He was put on a stand in front of thousands of people and awarded a medal. It was then taken from him and he was told he had broken a rule, devastating this kid. The executive director once again said he’d get back to me. When he called back, he had a compromise. No change in the meat results. No change to the points. No change to what they publish in record books from that year’s meet. Our kid, however, would get his gold medal and be declared a champion. That was all I cared about. When the medal came, we had a little ceremony at school for him to receive it. Now, this young man went on to become a valuable member of his community and a great family man. He is ultimately what high school sports is supposed to be about. And those are the kids coaches need to fight for. I’ll see you again next week.
