I have had the privilege of doing play-by-play for football and baseball at the high school level over the years, both from the press box and on radio in Lexington, South Carolina, and St. Cloud, Florida as well as Pop Warner football at Harmony, Florida.

When my children were growing up, I had the privilege of coaching at the Pop Warner level. Occasionally, someone will come up to me at church or in a restaurant and say "Hi, Coach." I know I am speaking to one of the kids with whom I used to work.

For anyone who has ever coached youngsters, that is the kindest title anyone could call you. It is a show of respect to accord you the title, despite not having done it for years.

Coaches are a special breed of people. They spend more time with children than the parents of those kids do. It is quite understandable that they would bond with them as I did with my own coach and mentor, the late J.W. Ingram. A love-hate relationship evolves as kids try to please their coach with good playmaking and victories.

My youngest son, Christopher, was an All-Conference center and a pretty decent athlete. His older twin brothers, Cory and Jason, were (as they say in the movie Rudy) five-foot-nothing and a hundred-nothing.

In four years at St. Cloud High School, my sons never missed a football practice. In four years, they never started and about the only time they ever got into a game was when the St. Cloud Bulldogs were well ahead or well behind. In four years, no matter what level on which they played, their teams never lost to archrival Osceola in nearby Kissimmee.

They never missed a practice, a game, or a class in school, receiving perfect attendance honors. Did they ever want to quit? If they did, they never shared that with their parents. Were they hurt by their lack of playing time? If they were, they never told us or their coaches. They simply showed up as if they were starting every play on both sides of the ball. I always admired that in my sons.

Recently I came across a letter that was written to them by their high school football coach, John Wallauer, who is now retired. Here is the letter.

The late Coach Carl Stegall came to my hometown of Lexington, South Carolina, with a former neighbor of mine, Coach Bob Whitehead, to take over the basketball fortunes at Lexington High School. Stegall had been a successful coach in the upper state of South Carolina.

Stegall's peers immediately questioned him: "Why Lexington? All they know is football and baseball!" Stegall's response was simple: "If they have great football players, then they are bound to have great basketball players, too. A great athlete is a great athlete."

Stegall and Whitehead helped Lexington turn their round ball fortunes around, but it was not easy. But then, nothing ever came easy for the lanky Newberry College graduate.

Carl Stegall grew up in the Anderson County, South Carolina "backwoods," as it was known in those days. There were only a dozen boys at Anderson's Melton High School, located between Pendleton and Slabtown. Stegall got five of his buddies together and approached the school about forming a basketball team.

They laughed at him. "You barely have enough kids to fill a roster," they said.

"We have six," said Stegall. "All we need is five to field a team." They chuckled, "What about fouls?" His response: "We can't afford to have many."

Those six brave youngsters, led by the lanky Stegall, clawed their way to the state championship in their first year, a real life Hoosiers story.

The remarkable accomplishment didn't go unnoticed. Newberry College learned of Stegall's talents and recruited him to play ball. He went on to star for the Indians in the late 1940s and early 50s. In 1950, he was named to the South Carolina All-State basketball team.

After college, Stegall followed his passion for sports and teaching. He became a teacher, coach, and athletic director in Greenville, Columbia, Lexington, and Anderson schools, a career that spanned more than 39 years.

He was the co-founder of the South Carolina State Basketball Coaches Association and was an inductee into the Brooklyn-Cayce High School Basketball Hall of Fame. He was also installed into the Newberry College Hall of Fame. This is what great mentors do—they give back to their profession.

Carl Stegall touched many people's lives over the years. All you have to do is look at me and you know I never played basketball for him. I'm about as wide as I am tall, but what I lack in height I make up for with slowness, which accounts for the reason I never made it past the intramural level of basketball at Lexington, that is, I'm short but I'm slow.

Stegall coached me in track and in football. No, I was not a sprinter on the track team. My head football and baseball, Coach J.W. Ingram, used to accuse me of running in one place too long. Stegall did use me as a shot put and discus guy on the track team. He also coached the B football team, which is where I encountered him.

I recall it was a nice May afternoon when Coach Stegall came to the door of Jim Shirley's algebra class to ask if he could speak to me. Mr. Shirley and I had an understanding. If I did not snore too loud, he would not toss me out on my heels. He knew I would never be a NASA rocket scientist, but he also knew I needed algebra to graduate. So we cut a deal.

Satisfied that I had already napped long enough and anxious to put a stop to my snoring, Mr. Shirley readily agreed to allow me a "leave of absence" from his class. In the hall, Coach Stegall asked if I wanted to be a kicker. "Kick what?" I asked incredulously. "A football!" he exclaimed.

Are you kidding me? I had trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. But I gave it a go, and not only did it get me out of Coach E.T. "Charge" Driggers dreaded head-on exercises, but it also allowed me to have what little notoriety I would enjoy in my otherwise mediocre athletic career. In fact, it earned me an All-State Shrine Bowl nomination during my senior year, though a broken leg put a stop to my athletic career.

"You have to see the ball through the goal post," explained Stegall. "Envision success. Hold your arms out in front of you and create an imaginary goal post. When you approach the ball, keep your head down, kick the ball squarely, and follow through by bringing your kicking leg straight through the imaginary goal post. After you kick the ball, reach down and grab a blade of grass. The crowd will let you know if the ball went through the uprights." Though it differs from one sport to another, a lot of coaches have one piece of advice that they offer to players: "Keep your head down and follow through." It's an interesting philosophy that, fascinatingly enough, works in real life, too. Many athletes also find that the crowd will let you know whether or not they approve of your plays—and the same is true with your customers and clients. They vote with their wallets and their loyalty to you and your company. Do your best to keep them as raving fans.

My mentor was a man named Coach James Wyman Ingram, who passed away at the ripe old age of 94. To fully appreciate his impact on the community of Lexington, South Carolina, you had to be one of the thousands of people he coached and taught in his four decades on the gridirons, diamonds, and hardwoods, as well as in the classrooms of Lexington.

In some cases, he actually coached or taught as many as three generations in one family. He coached many of my immediate family members as well as my uncles, Arthur and Eli Mack. He coached the late Congressman Floyd Spence, who not only earned a Shrine Bowl nomination, but also a full scholarship to the University of South Carolina.

On February 18, 1984, I had the privilege of heading up an Ingram-Driggers Appreciation Day Banquet thanking and honoring both Ingram and his longtime sidekick, E.T. "Charge" Driggers. One of Ingram's "boys," as he liked to call them, Congressman Spence, could not be there that night.

He wrote in a letter to the gathering that evening that no one other than his parents had had a greater impact on his life than Coach Ingram. "I might not be where I am today were it not for Coach Ingram. He was solely responsible for my appearance in the Shrine Bowl and me getting a scholarship to the University of South Carolina."

Both led to Spence earning a law degree and later entering the field of politics. He wasn't the only political prodigy of Ingram's. Others included former Lexington Mayors Hugh Rogers and Eli Mack Jr., as well as a variety of school board members, state representatives, and other political officials.

But that wasn't Ingram's greatest contribution. One could make the argument that his own accomplishments as a four-sport letterman at Newberry College were dwarfed only by his awesome record as a coach for nearly four decades at Lexington. His efforts at Newberry earned him membership into the Newberry College Hall of Fame in 1989.

In 1987, he was the very first inductee into the Lexington High School Hall of Fame. In 1993, the South Carolina Coaches Association enshrined him into their Coaches Hall of Fame.

On November 24, 2001, Coach Ingram was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame for Dekalb County, the community where he scored the first ever touchdown for the school's newly formed football team in 1926.

His Wildcat teams amassed a 218-77-10 record on the gridiron, including three state championships. His baseball teams earned one state title and 16 conference championships while amassing a 111-41 record. In addition, he coached boys' and girls' basketball to a 174-75 record, as well as coaching track and teaching Phys Ed.

At one time, he was the most successful active football coach in the state of South Carolina and among the top ten in the nation. He coached every sport at Lexington, drove the bus, and even acted as the janitor. In his day, you did it all. In addition, he served as athletic director.

In 1949, he coached the very first Horse Bowl in Camden, South Carolina. In 1954, Coach Ingram was selected to coach the Sandlappers in the annual Shrine Bowl. His squad was a prodigious underdog to the larger, faster North Carolina Tar Heel team. In fact, he had only one player over 200 pounds on the entire squad. South Carolina recorded the greatest upset in the history of the Shrine Bowl by a 27-7 score on the shoulders of 165-pound King Dixon of Laurens. The biggest reward for Coach Ingram was the inscription on the wall of the Shriners Children's Hospital: "Strong legs run so weak legs may walk."

Ingram's football teams were known for their unique offensive alignments and unusual blocking schemes. While serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he met the legendary Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns. When he returned to South Carolina, he brought back a blocking scheme never heard of in high school athletics at that time, a concept called cross-blocking.

Floyd Spence asked his college coaches at the University of South Carolina about cross-blocking. "We don't do that in college," explained the coaches. "That's something they do in the pros."

Ingram's stingy defenses were usually outmanned and outweighed. What made him so remarkable is that he took very ordinary kids from a very ordinary community and taught them how to play in an extraordinary way.

Almost every high school in America today platoons players. When you played for Ingram, you played four quarters and most kids played every down, which made what he accomplished at Lexington so remarkable. He won over 70 percent of his contests. His offensive football teams averaged over 300 yards per game and his defenses yielded less than 100 yards every outing.

Executive Sports Editor Herman Helms of Columbia's State Newspaper, speaking about Ingram at the 1984 banquet attended by over 1,000 fans and supporters, said Ingram looked more like a college professor than a football coach.

"He was as organized as any coach I've ever seen," said Helms. "His special teams were ahead of their time. I once asked him about the success of the special teams, and he remarked sensibly that on most kicking plays, all the players start out unblocked and open. Why not take advantage of it?"

Former Saluda and Lower Richland football coach Mooney Player called him the greatest offensive mind he had ever met—high school, college, or pros.

Former Swansea coach Doug Bennett called him a gentleman. "In all the years I knew Coach Ingram," said Bennett, "he never said a word about his faith but I knew he was a God-fearing man."

"I first learned of him when my high school football team in York (near Rock Hill) was playing Lexington," said Bennett. "One of the kids on our team broke his leg against Lexington. Not even a week went by when we received a check in the mail representing money that Coach Ingram and the people of Lexington had raised for the young man. He had lots of class."

Former Presbyterian College coach Cally Gault, another of the speakers at the 1984 banquet, called Ingram one of the most gracious men he had ever met in athletics.

"It must be a wonderful thing to take a thin pine board and a bit of string and some glue and to make of it a violin that would solve out the great 'Ave Maria'," said Gault. "And it must be a beautiful thing to take a bit of gold and a few springs and to make of it a timepiece that would keep pace with the magnificent sun. And it must be a gorgeous thing to take a canvas and a bit of paint and a brush and to make of it a painting such as the Malaise Angelis. It is a splendid thing to take a boy, to discipline him, coach him, and make of him a man. That's what Coach J.W. Ingram did with so many young men and women for nearly four decades."

Despite all the remarkable things Ingram did in both the classroom as an English and French teacher and in the athletic arena, he was a husband to two great women in his life, Christine B. (first wife) and Ethelyn J. (second wife), succeeding each of them.

Clearly, he was a surrogate father to me and many others. One touching story resounds even today about a young man named Tillman Craft, who came to Lexington from the Edmund community. He was a product of a broken home, causing him to be separated from his seven brothers and sisters in the fifth grade. Coach Ingram learned of the young man's plight and became his surrogate father.

Unable to put him up in his own small home because of small children of his own, Coach Ingram quietly let the boy move into the old Lexington gym that stood some two blocks from his home on North Lake Drive in Lexington. He fed and clothed Tillman, never asking for assistance or permission.

In return, Tillman slept at night in the gym at night, bathed in the showers there, and kept the floors cleaned as his rent. Coach and Mrs. Ingram kept him in clean clothes and saw to his medical and physical needs.

Soon the authorities found out about it and forced Coach Ingram to move the young man out of the gym. They found him a room over a doctor's office near Coach Ingram's home. Coach continued to feed and provide for Tillman.

After high school, he enrolled at the University of South Carolina, where he studied law enforcement. He graduated with honors from USC—the first in his family to go to college. He entered the U.S. Army, where he served his country and also excelled as an athlete.

Tillman entered the military and was a multiple sport standout in the armed forces. After completing his military duty, Tillman returned to South Carolina where he entered the University of South Carolina Law School, earning a juris doctorate.

He later went to work for the FBI where he built a remarkable career as one of J. Edgar Hoover's finest. After retiring from the FBI, he opened his own security agency in Houston, Texas, that named among its clients the Houston Rockets and the Houston Astros. He later retired a second time and bought an oil company.

You have to ask yourself the question: Which side of the law would a homeless fifth grade child have ended up on were it not for the love and concern of James Wymon Ingram?

Indeed, he was more than a humble teacher and football coach. He was an icon, a mentor, an advocate, and a great teacher, all of which made him a great coach.

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