Have there been any awards that Summerville (SC) High School’s John McKissick hasn’t won in his distinguished 60-year football coaching career? The latest being the “Don Shula NFL High School Coach of the Year” honor presented to McKissick at the festivities surrounding the recent Super Bowl.
Coach McKissick began teaching and coaching in (what was then) small-town Summerville in 1952, and in his legendary tenure he has won more games than any football coach in America, at any level–high school, college, or the pros–with a record of 594-143-13.
My family and I moved to Summerville in 1975 when it was beginning to explode, population-wise, a part of the greater Charleston tri-county area. By that time, Summerville High School was one of the largest in the state, and in the ensuing years two other high schools, of a similar size, have been added to accommodate the school district’s burgeoning number of students.
When the Summerville public schools successfully integrated, racially, in the 1960’s, I suspect John McKissick had as much to do as anyone with that accomplishment. But those qualities of his leadership often get overlooked when compared to his prodigious success in coaching winning football teams. If you’ve read Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides, you’ve likely noted his tribute to Coach McKissick. And among the many outstanding Summerville Greenwave athletes who have gone on to play football at the college and professional level, this year’s rookie sensation, the Cincinnati Bengal’s A.J. Green, may be the best so far. Or as they say, Coach McKissick doesn’t “recruit,” he just “re-loads.
Among McKissick’s ten state championships, my son, Jimmy Knight, was privileged to play on his 1986 team. And considering the coach’s longevity, it is comparably impressive that he’s had success whether Summerville High School has had an enrollment of 200 students or in the thousands.
Obviously, John McKissick–still coaching at age 85–is characterized by his remarkable physical and mental health, as well as his discipline in sustaining such a vital way of living and working. I have found him as authentically humble and unpretentious as anyone I’ve ever known and, at times, given to being quite a philosopher. At one of his milestones of success, as he was aging past when most men have stopped working, he remarked to me: “If other guys have had a career in a bank or a law office, I guess you could say I’ve spent my lifetime on the playground.”
In my book, Balanced Living: Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness (Wipf and Stock, 2009), as the heading of each chapter I have included insightful, often humorous sayings I’ve collected over the years. One of which is from Coach McKissick, a comment I remember him making in my presence. As a way of deflecting too much ego over his remarkable success and many accolades, and the fact that he is so idolized by generations of Greenwave players and their parents, other students, local townspeople and opponents alike, John quipped: “More people will come to your funeral if it’s a pretty day.”
So, having quoted him, I gave him a copy of the book in appreciation for the integrity of his worthy life and work. He said he didn’t remember having said what I had remembered him saying, but then added: “Balance–that’s what I’ve always told my teams. If we have balance–between offense and defense–we’ll be pretty good.”
Except, of course–even if I once upon a time played the game pretty seriously myself–my book has as little to do with football as it does with nuclear physics, accounting or brain surgery. But then that’s John McKissick, the prism through which he understands life and has lived his with such richness, fullness and excellence. Or as I often explain, when people ask me, “What’s Coach McKissick like?”
“He’s a football coach,” I say–just that simple and uncomplicated.
Indeed, in his typically deferential way, he once told me about playing in a charity golf outing with the, then, successful Citadel football coach, Charlie Taaffe, who is as accomplished a golfer as McKissick isn’t. “Now I know why Summerville has such good football teams,” John reported Charlie saying to him. “Because you sure haven’t spent much time on the golf course!”
So I was hardly surprised at Coach’s comment upon winning his latest award from the National Football League. In explaining that he has, hopefully, imparted more than just the X’s and O’s and all the rest that’s involved in playing winning football to generations of Summerville High School boys (grandfathers, fathers and sons, including his own three grandsons) over the past six decades, John McKissick offered yet another of his wise aphorisms.
“Life is football without a helmet,” he is quoted as saying.
And it surely is. If you can’t “take a lick” or “roll with a punch”–when it comes to living, with all its joy and pain–whatever your life may be, it’s not likely to end up anywhere close to the beauty, strength and grace of how John McKissick has lived his.
