Billy Henderson: The Voice of a Coach

I still show up 15 minutes early. It drives me crazy. That sense of uneasiness inside me. I’m letting my team down. It makes no sense, but it is still there 23 years later. That came from Billy. He’s the voice you hear — decades later — deep in the recesses of your mind that you can’t flee, so you embrace it.

“If you’re not there 15 minutes early, then you’re late ...”

Coach Billy Henderson recently passed away. I have a feeling he took his last breath 900 seconds before God expected because he wanted to get to the pearly gates 15 minutes early. His son Brad and beloved wife Fosky beat him there, which may be one of the only times Billy wasn’t first to his destination.

Billy was a winner from a young age. By the time he arrived at the University of Georgia as a freshman he already had a lifetime of accomplishments. In high school, he earned 14 letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track. At a UGA, he was a two-sport standout earning a total of eight letters. He played on the 1946 and 1948 SEC Championship football teams and was a three-time MVP in baseball, where he still holds the stolen base record 60 years later. Following graduation, he was drafted and signed by the Chicago Cubs. He spent two years in their organization before he chose to follow the passion that had driven him since he was a little boy … to be a coach. From that day forward, he never worked again.

“Find what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life …”

Over 45 years as a high school coach, Billy led teams to 285 victories (222 of them at Clarke Central), three state football championships as a head coach, two more as an assistant, and for good measure, coached teams to baseball and swimming state championships. More than 170 of Billy’s boys went on to play college football. Numerous more went on to play other sports in college. Fourteen played in the NFL. Three played in the Super Bowl. Those are the easy numbers to count. The trail of changed lives he left that are impossible to quantify. He convinced men they could be great and taught a community that it could heal in the wake of desegregation.

“I looked around the gym and saw white hands holding black hands; hands of the rich and prominent holding hands with poor kids from the other side of the track. And I was thinking, if all human beings did something like this there would be few problems in this world ..."

I stopped by to see him a few months ago with my friend and teammate, Stan Baker. We reminisced and told stories. His body was frail, but his mind was as sharp as ever. He was still our coach and we were still learning about more than football.

“Always tell the truth and you’ll never have to remember what you said …”

Sitting in his living room, I was taken back to autumn Friday nights on the corner of Baxter and Milledge, where so much of who I am, who we are, was formed. We’d file into the weight room, an old gym that was turned into a shrine of teams past. Championship banners that reminded all of us that we were next in a line of boys who would become men under Billy’s tutelage. In six-foot letters across the red and yellow wall cinder block were the words WE LEAD! IT CAN BE DONE!

We sat in folding chairs, holding hands, a team locked together with one mission. Following an eclectic playlist that could only come from the mind of Billy (including Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston and Survivor), he would meander around the side of the room and walk to the old chalkboard. Slowly, methodically, he’d draw 11 circles in the I-formation. Then, he’d draw 11 Xs in a straight 50 defense. With the precision of a surgeon he would diagram the same exact play – Tight Power-I Right 42. It’s the most basic play in football, but he didn’t care, he was teaching us more than a game:

• Get the fundamentals right and you can achieve anything;

• Every man has an assignment, don’t let your teammate down;

• When all of you work together, the sum is greater than its parts;

• The man across from you may be bigger than you, he may be faster than you, but you are a Gladiator and you can’t be beat.

He may be gone, but his voice lives inside every man who played for him. Some people have jobs, others have callings. Billy had a calling. You can’t run from a calling, so you might as well run right up the middle. And Billy did.

“If you can run 42, you can do anything …”