When you talk to Billy Henderson about his illustrious career coaching high school football, the word that comes up most often is “family.” On paper, there are the three football state titles at Clarke Central and the 167 former players that moved on to the college ranks. But what stays with Henderson most are the memories of how football can take a group of people and make them into a family, a community.
Before he was hoisting trophies as the coach of Clarke Central, Henderson credits a number of important people with instilling in him the values that he coached with throughout his career.
“My dad died when I was eight and my mother had four kids to raise,” Henderson recalls. “There’s no way to measure the sacrifices she made when I was in high school, walking to and from work to save bus fare so I could play (sports). She was the biggest influence on my life.
“Everything I do right I learned from her. All the bad things I do I learned on my own,” he said with a chuckle.
It was at Macon’s old Lanier High School that Henderson knew his calling was to play professional baseball and, afterwards, to coach high school sports. His high school coach, John “Stooge” Davis, also had a great impact on him during his formative years, and was one of the first coaches to embrace weight training methods, which Henderson took with him in his coaching career.
Indeed, it was Henderson’s high school athletics experience that set the stage for the coaching and teaching philosophies he would use until his retirement.
“When I went to Lanier High School, I went to the gym, I was 13 years old, and I saw two signs,” Henderson remembers. “One said, ‘We lead,’ and the other one said, ‘It can be done.’ And if you go to the Clarke Central weight room today, you’ll see those same big old signs.”
After playing defensive end and being named all-SEC two times as a baseball player during his career at the University of Georgia, Henderson realized his dream of playing professional baseball. He was in the Cubs organization for two years and then, according to plan, he took his first coaching job at Jefferson under his old coach, John “Stooge” Davis. From there, he moved to Athens High as a football assistant, and then tried his hand at the college level at Furman University and the University of South Carolina.
The defining moment of his early coaching career, however, came when he accepted the head job at a brand new Macon school, Willingham High, in 1958.
“I was 29 at the time and I knew everything,” Henderson says jokingly about taking the job at Willingham. “We were going to whip everybody. They might not even make a first down.”
That first season we were 0-7-3, we tied three games. But those kids that were there stuck together, and in a few short years we were whipping our rivals, Lanier High.”
After compiling a 63-42-15 record at Willingham, Henderson spent a few years away from coaching before taking the job at Clarke Central, another football program in its infancy. The rest is history; the three titles and seven finals appearances, as well as the handful of NFL players the program has produced, speak for themselves. But it’s a singular moment at the Athens school that can sum up Henderson’s coaching career.
“One of my biggest thrills was back in 1977,” he recalls. “We were in the weight room before practice. We had moms and dads and cheerleaders and players that were dressed for practice, and we had our devotional.
“The young man who was our chaplain was going to close his prayer, and I didn’t close my eyes. I looked out at that audience and I saw black hands and white hands, rich hands and poor hands, all sorts of denominations holding hands. And I said to myself, God, if everybody in this world had something like this group here, we’d have no problems in life.”
By Score Atlanta’s Alex Ewalt.
Loading ...
