The Most Influential People in My Life Have All Been Coaches

A COACH'S LEGACY (sample chapter from the book GET MORE FOR COACHES by Joby Slay)

The most influential people in my life have all been coaches. I had a front row seat to observing one of the greatest coaches of all time, my grandfather, still coaching people thirty to forty years after he coached his last football game. I witnessed how the influence of the coach on his players was still ingrained in them forty years after they played their last game for him. I knew what legacy was before I ever heard the word legacy uttered. I was experiencing it and a party to my grandfather’s coaching legacy.

My grandfather was a short stocky man, strong, with calves like tree trunks and forearms like Popeye. He always seemed to be the shortest man in the room, but everyone looked at him as if he were a giant. That’s an interesting thing to experience and witness, when everyone in the room is looking up to the shortest man in it. His eyes and actions showed compassion for his fellow man and there was a quiet inner strength to him. It seemed to me as if everyone knew him and everyone loved him and everyone was always excited to see him.

 A COACH’S LEGACY

In 1964, my grandfather was awarded the Meritorious Service Award by the Florida Athletic Coaches Association for “coaches who have served the high school athletic coaching profession above and beyond the call of duty.” He was elected into the FACA Hall of Fame in 1979.

I was fortunate enough to be present for his induction ceremonies to three of the four Hall of Fames he was inducted to as a football player and as a coach. He was inducted into the Florida High School Activities Association Hall of Fame as a part of the Charter Class in 1991. A couple years later, he was inducted into the Oglethorpe University Athletics Hall of Fame, his college alma-mater in Atlanta, GA and the St. Lucie County Sports Hall of Fame. One of my most prized possessions is his FHSAA/FACA Hall of Fame ring. It’s the ring I remember him wearing the most. I love it because I can see the scratches on the stone and the turtle wax still stuck in the engravings from when he used to wear it.

I came across an article online when I was researching some of my grandfather’s history. It was titled “All-time all-area football team: Who’s the head coach?” and written in 2018. My grandfather was nominated as one of the coaches. I include an excerpt here:

“The Treasure Coast has been home to some sound outstanding football players and coaches, but who are the best of the best? … And the nominees are …

Larry “Hunk” Slay (Ft. Pierce/Dan McCarty High 1946 – 1961) “One of the most beloved coaches in area history, Slay played for the Eagles in the 1930s and returned as head coach in 1946 after a 3 year stint as coach of Swainsboro (Georgia) and a hitch in the United States Army during World War II. His 16 year-run included 99 wins – still the most in St. Lucie County history – and five Suncoast Conference championships. He later served as athletic director and St. Lucie County’s athletic coordinator. Was inducted into the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1979 and was a member of the inaugural FHSAA Hall of Fame class in 1991.”

As an aside, the FHSAA bio lists him with 100 wins, so just saying! It was honestly super cool to see that 57 years after he coached his last football game that even people in the local media are still writing about his coaching career.

My grandfather never coached beyond high school football. Yet, he obviously had a successful career. He had one really successful team that went undefeated, and I don’t think gave up a touchdown the whole season running a 9-3 defense. I don’t even know how you do that but it doesn’t even matter and it doesn’t even matter that they were undefeated. What matters, what I noticed as a boy, was that thirty to forty years later I would see week after week these boys that my grandfather coached that were now men, some of them fifty plus years old and maybe grandfathers themselves, returning to my grandfather’s kitchen table–a little round wooden table with four chairs with flat wood armrests that rounded at the hands. And my grandfather would smoke a cigar every once in a while, and we’d draw up football plays and my grandmother would bring in lunch. And if you knew my grandparents you never came to the front door, you always came around to the back door because you knew you would usually find my grandfather either out in the backyard raking leaves—he was always raking leaves cause they had this massive oak tree—or you’d find him sitting in the back Florida room. It had a wooden door with that jalousie window cutout in the middle with a metal frame over the glass to protect it so when you knocked it had this distinct sound that kinda rattled the glass and metal too. So they’d come to the back door and rattle it or find my grandfather in the yard and hardly anyone called—they just dropped by to visit with Grandfather and he received them. Nobody does that anymore – “the drop by.”

So my grandfather always sat at the same chair with his back to that door and if I was there I usually sat to his right and his guests would either sit across from him or pull up close to his left. He lost some of the hearing in his right ear from manning a heavy machine gun in WWII. My grandmother would bring in something cold to drink. Some of these men were in athletics administration, so I might hear them receiving some advice regarding whatever situation they might be dealing with. I think sometimes they just came to check in and catch up with the old coach. I think sometimes they just needed to feel that someone still believed in them and give them a little motivation. Some of them just wanted to thank him for believing in them forty years earlier and being another father figure to them and being willing to try to get more out of them.

And so, it was by my grandfather’s side where I first learned about LEGACY. No one had to tell me about it. When I first heard the word, I saw it and understood it, because I had witnessed it in those little kitchen table visits. And I experienced it when inevitably one of my coaches would say to me, “Ya know, your grandfather coached me in high school.” Or one of my friend’s dad would say, “You’re Coach Slay’s grandson? I played for your grandfather in high school.” Or my dad might say, “You know, so and so and so and so played for Papa.” There were several of those.

I’ve heard it said there is a difference between leadership that works and leadership that endures. My grandfather’s coaching was enduring.

 A COACH’S INFLUENCE

My defensive backs coach for our varsity football team in high school once said to me, “Ya know, your grandfather gave me my first PE teacher job when I graduated college.” (My grandfather eventually became the athletic director for the county, twice.) And my coach began to tell a story that went something like this.

He said, one day I was out at the field and I had these little kids lined up doing calisthenics and your grandfather’s office was in a building close by and he walked out to the field behind the kids and motioned me to come over to visit with him. I made my way over to him and he put his arm around me and turned me around and now the kids were turned around facing us and he just said, “If anyone needs to face into the sun let it just be you.” I looked and could now see all these kids looking at me not squinting or putting their heads down to avoid the sun and your grandfather said, “When the kids are looking at you they are here (hand down by waist) and you are here (hand up by face) so they end up looking straight into the sun. You’re looking down and it’s better to have one person looking into the sun than 20.” And then he left me to it and went back inside.

It was a mind-opening experience for this coach and he appreciated that my grandfather who was the athletics administrator for the entire county would take the time to not just tell him in passing or send him a note, but take the time to spend a moment with him to show him. Today I do the same thing. If I notice I’ve got kids looking into the sun I move myself, or I look to setup drills so they won’t be looking into the sun if I can help it. My grandfather never told me that. He never taught me that lesson, directly. A coach that he took the time to teach that lesson too who eventually became my coach told me a story that originated from another coach, that just happened to be my grandfather, and taught me that lesson. So as coaches when you take the time to put your arm around someone and invest into them, it does pay returns because you may be coaching the people that will one day be coaching your grandchildren.

I remember the day my grandfather died. I was in my senior year at Palm Beach Atlantic College in West Palm Beach, FL and had been on the road at a soccer game in Daytona Beach, FL at Embry Riddle. I remember thinking about my grandfather on the way up there because I happened to hear a Jimmy Buffett song called Captain and the Kid. That was probably about the time he passed. We didn’t have cellphones then so my mom had called my apartment. When I got back to my apartment I shared with a few other guys, one of them said my mom had called and I knew from his face it was bad. I remember going up to the house in Ft. Pierce the next day. I made my way around to the back of my grandparent’s house, went up the two concrete steps and opened the back door, stepped into the room with the wooden table and chairs and he wasn’t there, and I collapsed against the doorframe and balled for I don’t know how long until my grandmother found me there. It still brings me to tears just writing about it.

 THE OAK TREE

That week, two interesting things happened. My grandmother, Gran, as us grandkids called her, said a man had stopped by the house a few days before when my grandfather was outside raking the yard. Remember the massive oak tree I mentioned? Taller than his white washed two-story house with branches that probably stretched just as wide as the house or more. One of my first memories—I imagine I was around two years old—was my parents holding me as we walked up into the yard. We lived directly across the street from them until I was about 8, and I remember my parents setting me down and me running up to my grandparents under that massive oak tree, like a canopy, and them both with their arms out waiting for me and them scooping me up.

It was a massive tree and it just dumped massive buckets of leaves. I know because I filled those garbage-can buckets of leaves with him all my childhood. My brother and sister and I would jump into those big piles of leaves and you could just disappear. We use to chase golf balls out of that tree we would hit up there—that’s how thick it was.

So he was out there under the tree raking up the piles of leaves and a man stopped on the side of the road and got out of his car and came up into the yard to speak to my grandfather and he said “I’ve been driving by here for over forty years going to work and he said I was driving by the day you planted that tree and saw you planting it and I’ve watched it grow now for over forty years and seen you out here in the yard raking the leaves and I just had to stop to tell you that.” I imagine that moment and that oak tree as a picture of the many seeds my grandfather planted in the boys he coached who grew to become deeply rooted, solid men.

 A COACH’S IMPACT

The day my grandfather died a letter had arrived in the mail. Gran didn’t find it until a few days later. It was a letter from one of his former players. And it was basically a thank you letter to my grandfather for pouring into the man as a high school kid, and believing in him and being another father figure to him. And he just wanted to let my grandfather know how much he meant to him and how much influence my grandfather had on who he became as a man and that he loved him for it. This former player came to the funeral service from out of the area that week after my grandmother called to tell him and I got to talk with him some. It was a very cool experience to see how much this man we had never met or known until this moment loved and cherished my grandfather. This former player loved this man that was just his old high school football coach for a couple years. My grandfather never got to read the letter, but I did.

A coach will impact more young people in a year than the average person does in a lifetime.

– Billy Graham

You see, many of the kids you will have the opportunity to coach will see and spend more time with you over the course of several months than any other person. In the thick of season, sometimes we may have two to three hours a day of very direct, personal contact with a kid. We have gamedays where we might be together from 3-10 p.m. I remember showing up in our football locker room in high school for a 1 p.m. Saturday kickoff at 8 a.m. in the morning and it would be me, one other player usually, and coach. Teachers might see them five hours a week. Depending on the homelife schedule and parents work schedule they might, might get a good hour a day of direct contact with their child during these high school years. The parents might be there but the kids doing homework, the parents are making dinner, taking care of household things. Parents might attend all their child’s games but they are there watching, and not in direct interaction during the training and learning in this team environment, and so as coaches you are so important. You are one of the most influential people in this person’s life and depending upon their situation you might be THE MOST influential person, and the person they spend the most time with each day.

So, you see why I am passionate about this, about giving you something as coaches that has helped me create more wins with my players. To help enhance you as the coach and empower you to GET MORE out of your players and team.

My GET MORE definition of empowerment is a person’s self-confidence to take initiative in doing more, which fuels their creativity, imagination, and passion and creates even greater momentum and motivation.

 Joseph Lawrence "Hunk" Slay

Coach. Inducted 1991 (charter class)

To all who know him, he is simply, ”Coach.” To the hundreds he has coached, and the hundreds whose lives he has touched, he is simply, “Coach.”

A graduate of Fort Pierce High School, Oglethorpe University, and the University of Florida, Slay has served as football coach, athletic director and athletic coordinator in Georgia and Florida. his lifetime record is 100-40-7, with five conference championships. Slay was instrumental in the development of the Florida All-Star Football Game, and coached the South team in 1956.

During his tenure as a coach, Slay became active in the Florida Athletic Coaches Association and has held every elected office. He also served on the FHSAA Board of Directors representing the coaches association. In 1979, Slay received the Meritorious Service Award from the Florida Athletic Coaches Association as well as being inducted into the Florida Coaches Hall of Fame and was awarded a Life Membership in the Association.

During his years as coach and athletic director in St. Lucie County, he served the community as a member and officer of the St. Lucie County Recreation Board, and is still an active member. “Coach” was a driving force in the development of St. Lucie County Lawnwood Sports Complex which consists of baseball diamonds, tennis courts, fitness trail, track and Lawnwood Football Stadium, one of the finest football stadiums in Florida.

Slay retired in 1976, but was called out of retirement in 1979 to become Athletic Coordinator for the District. During this time he completed the first Athletic Policy and Procedures Handbook for St. Lucie County Schools. He was also instrumental in developing a covered play area for all of the elementary schools, which many school districts in Florida have adopted.

His philosophy has always been that “winning is awfully important, but you can't let it overshadow all other values, and that athletics and physical education must be educationally sound to be valuable.”