CHARLOTTE — The obituaries described Coy Gibbs in many of the same terms: husband, father of four, son of former NFL coach Joe Gibbs, vice chairman of his dad’s NASCAR team, and former college football player and NASCAR driver.
The tributes omitted another role Gibbs held that few in the auto racing world knew about: Pop Warner football coach.
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But the 60 or so parents and kids who came to Carmel Middle School in south Charlotte on Tuesday evening knew Gibbs as the coach of the South Park Falcons — a guy with an NFL pedigree that he never mentioned who kept showing up to coach every fall, even after his sons had outgrown the program.
About 35 of Gibbs’ former South Park players gathered three nights after Gibbs died in his sleep, a few hours after his 20-year-old son Ty won the 2022 Xfinity Series championship at Phoenix Raceway. Gibbs was 49, the same age his brother J.D. was when he died in 2019 of a neurological disease.
There was pizza, leftover Halloween candy and bottled water spread across a long table outside Carmel Middle, along with two footballs and a framed photo of Gibbs’ last South Park team that all his former players signed. The kids ate and tossed the football for about an hour in the fading sunlight while remembering a coach who had spent eight seasons teaching the game he’d grown up with.
A statement from NASCAR Chairman and CEO Jim France on the passing of Coy Gibbs. pic.twitter.com/Ja94LfO5C8
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) November 6, 2022
“We always kept him with our youngest kids, our 8- and 9-year-olds. Because if they played for him, we knew they were coming back the following year,” said Thomas Hancock, the South Park football commissioner. “We knew they were going to have a great experience.”
Players said Gibbs knew how to make practice fun while still getting his points across. When he was coaching a team of fifth- and sixth-graders in the fall of 2019, Gibbs would play rap music on a portable speaker before every practice and once staged an impromptu dance contest.
“We did a dance circle one time,” David McCrorey said. “He didn’t dance. He just laughed at us and when we did bad, we had to run.”
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Josh Falzarano, an assistant coach with Gibbs for two seasons, said Gibbs was a throwback as far as his coaching style and offensive philosophy.
“He wanted to win at all times. But he started at the bottom. He taught fundamentals — blocking, tackling, all that. These coaches aren’t teaching that anymore,” Falzarano said. “He was old-school football. ‘I’m gonna run it all day till I can’t.’”
Gibbs was a linebacker at Stanford who served as an offensive quality control coach during his father’s second stint as Washington’s head coach. Joe Gibbs would show up for the South Park games when his grandchildren were playing.
Scott Presson, whose son Cooper played for the Falcons for two years, said Joe Gibbs would sit by himself — his hat pulled low on his head and taking notes, which he would share with his son at halftime.
But Falzarano said you’d never know Coy Gibbs had an NFL coaching lineage.
“He didn’t flaunt it. He didn’t show it. He drove a (Toyota) Tundra to practice,” he said. “You think he’d pull up in a Range Rover. He’s driving a Tundra with paint scraped off the side. He doesn’t care. That’s Coach. He’s wearing all black every day, and it might be the same outfit.”
Gibbs might not have mentioned his NFL background. But Hancock said he sometimes would use it when he’d receive an email from a parent complaining about playing time or touches.
“He coached in the NFL. His dad’s got a couple Super Bowl rings,” Hancock recalled responding. “We’re not going to get a better volunteer for this job.”
Presson said Gibbs told parents at a start-of-season meeting that his sense of humor might rub them the wrong way until they picked up on his sarcasm. But as Hancock indicated, many of the players who were there Tuesday played for Gibbs for multiple seasons.
“He was here because he loved it,” Hancock said. “He could be doing a million other things. He was here just for the kids.”
Adults and kids came out Tuesday as a tribute to Coy Gibbs at Carmel Middle School. (Joe Person / The Athletic)Gibbs continued coaching South Park even as he took on a more prominent role at Joe Gibbs Racing and his son was quickly becoming one of NASCAR’s top up-and-coming drivers. Gibbs would try to schedule his Pop Warner games for Saturday mornings so he could jump on a private plane or helicopter and get to wherever NASCAR was racing that weekend.
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Gibbs took Falzarano, whose son Josh was a South Park running back, to a race in Martinsville, Va., a few years ago and gave him a behind-the-scenes tour of the garages and pit row. The two stayed in touch after Falzarano’s son moved on to Carmel Middle and Myers Park High, with Gibbs texting during football seasons for updates on his former players.
“He was younger than he actually was. He was 49, but he was a young guy in his soul,” Falzarano said. “I’m gonna miss him.”
Presson recalled a late-season practice a few years ago when his son, a running back who had not yet hit a growth spurt, was finishing behind the offensive linemen during wind sprints.
“Cooper, you’re as light as a feather, but you’re the slowest one out here!” Presson recalled Gibbs saying in a joking manner.
So when Cooper, now about eight inches taller than he was as a Falcon, broke off a long touchdown run for his middle school team this fall, his thoughts returned to his old Pop Warner coach.
“I wish,” Cooper told his dad, “we could let coach Gibbs know I’m fast now.”
(Top photo: Josh Falzarano / For The Athletic)
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