Sam Goodwin died at his home last Friday night, at age 82.
On hearing the news, on came the memories, the earliest for me from 1976. Goodwin was the head coach at Parkview High in Little Rock at the time and had just directed the team to an 11-0 season and its second No. 1 ranking in the state in three years. Pondering his future for an Alexandria Town Talk story I was working on, he wondered in a phone interview if he should coach at a higher level.
“I just don’t know what I want,” he admitted. “I used to be real ambitious and wanted to make it to the college level … but every year I seem more content with what I’m doing.”
He stayed a few more years at Parkview and remained content, leading the team to five state championships in nine seasons. But he took the bait to coach at the collegiate level, accepting an offer he couldn’t refuse – from Lou Holtz, then the head coach at Arkansas. Goodwin spent two seasons (1981, ’82) in Fayetteville under the charismatic Holtz, who later led Notre Dame to a national championship. The two are presumably reunited since Holtz died earlier this month.
Coaching was something Sam wanted to do since his junior year at Pineville High School in 1960, when he helped the Rebels win a state championship. His PHS coach, Jimmy Keeth, said, “He was the kind of boy you would want to call your own.”
I don’t know that I’ve ever known a coach who was more humble, more sincere, more resilient and or more determined. He got his apprenticeship as a college head coach at Southern Arkansas University, where he worked two seasons before accepting the head coaching position at Northwestern State.
Although he had to leave Arkansas, where he thrived not only as a coach but as a two-sport star athlete (football and track and field) at Henderson State, Goodwin and NSU were seemingly meant for each other.
He coached the Demons to 102 victories, four conference championships, and one FCS semifinal in 17 seasons – easily making him the winningest football coach in the school’s history.
Another Goodwin memory that gently came wandering through my mind was the tribute he gave to his first wife, Janet, at her funeral in July 2000. She was just 54 when she died suddenly while visiting their oldest daughter in South Carolina. It was the first funeral ever at NSU’s Prather Coliseum, and it was shortly after he retired as Northwestern’s coach to accept the job as athletics director at his alma mater, Henderson State.
The place was packed, not only in respect for Sam but because Janet was one to easily make friends, especially someone who needed a friend. She was a second mother to the members of the team and active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She encouraged others to do as she had done and “Fall Madly in Love with Christ.”
At the funeral, Sam used some of his time for the eulogy to do something he had never done before in public – sing a song. He said he knew he would be remembered at NSU for his coaching career, but he wanted Janet to be remembered, too.
“I’m going to start this, and if I don’t finish, you pick it up,” he said to the crowd. Then he sang, “The Wind Beneath My Wings” (“I was the one with all the glory, you were the one who walked behind…”). He made it all the way through, but about two-thirds the way through his family huddled by him to hug him and weep as he continued singing.
“As a person,” former NSU basketball coach and athletics director Tynes Hildebrand once said, “I’d put Sam Goodwin in the top 10 percent in America.”
Hyperbole? Perhaps, but Sam Goodwin had an appropriate last name, not only for the many “good wins” he was part of on the athletic fields but on the fields of life, however rocky they sometimes were for him.
I think of his coming out of retirement to coach football at ASH at age 70, and the struggles he had with the Trojans that first year. He was their third coach in three years. The program was in the pits. But in his second and final year as coach, at age 71, he and his staff got the football juices flowing again at ASH. The Trojans went 6-4 in the regular season, made it to the playoffs and had an offense –directed by quarterback (and later LSU pitcher) Matthew Beck — that could score from anywhere on the field.
It was fitting and proper that he finish his head coaching career on a positive note – reflecting that optimism, resiliency, courage and determination that was so much of who he was throughout his lifetime.
