The Man We ALL Call “Coach”
By Terry Artis, Founder/President/Publisher
When you take children, a number of whom are from difficult circumstances, and show them how they too can achieve by working hard and as a team, you have the possibility of changing the world. Coach Floyd Irons lifted up every child and parent in the St. Louis Public School system, as well as the Black community as a whole, when he touched the children of the Vashon Wolverine basketball teams. I recently sat down with another of my heroes: “Coach.”
Born and raised in St. Louis city, Floyd Irons attended Blewitt Elementary and Vashon High School (graduating class of 1967). Irons went on to Langston University on a half-academic and half-basketball scholarship. “You know at that time, with our Black schools and Black Institutions, I have to give a lot of credit to SLPS and Langston for my accomplishments in terms of the nurturing and the type of education that I received.”
After college, when Floyd came back to St. Louis, he didn’t have in mind staying and teaching. His interest was in urban planning and he had accepted a fellowship at Oklahoma University. Some friends in the City of St. Louis Public Schools asked him about maybe staying home and pursuing a teaching career. Floyd applied and in 1971 was assigned to teach Social Studies at Vashon High School.
In his first year of teaching at Vashon, Irons accepted his first official coaching position as men’s varsity (soccer) coach. “I knew of soccer, because of Pelé (Black Brazilian – world’s greatest soccer player of the time). I knew very little about soccer, but the bottom line is I probably appreciated coaching soccer about as much as I did coaching basketball. It taught me a lot about myself and dedication to something even though you might know little about the activity.” Coach Irons went on to praise his first soccer team for their understanding of his being a novice in the sport and allowing him to learn from them as they learned from him. “It was a great experience.”
As we continued our conversation at Conelley’s Goody Goody Diner, a former student came over to greet Floyd. It was clear to see that the young man had a lot of affection and appreciation for his former coach. Coach also pointed out a young man working at the diner who was a former student. “I see my kids everywhere that I go. It’s a great feeling.”
Mr. Irons began coaching Vashon basketball at the junior varsity levels (freshmen/sophomore) in 1972. At that time Ron Coleman coached varsity and Marvin Neals was Coleman’s assistant. Neals went on to coach at Soldan High School, and in 1974 Floyd Irons became the coach of the men’s varsity basketball team at Vashon High School; the amazing “Wolverines.”
In 1976, Irons realized that coaching basketball was really in his blood and that he would put forth every effort to bring his team to new heights. The team did very well throughout the late ‘70’s. In 1982, Coach thought that the team had done very well to that time, but he wanted to make the Vashon Wolverines Men’s Basketball team a household name. “Be it in the city, state or around the country. I felt that by strengthening the basketball programs, which would just be one part of the entire entity, it would give the community and our children an opportunity to identify with something that was very, very successful. It would make young people proud again to be able to go out and say, ‘I’m a product of Vashon High School.’”
During that same time, there had been talk of closing Vashon High School due to plans for developing the Grand Center area. The school building, at its former location on Grand Avenue, had become what many describe as an ‘eyesore’ and there was talk that St. Louis University had interest in the area as well. This was also the period that the Voluntary Deseg’ Program was taking hold. “I and a number of my colleagues had serious concerns about the future and what would happen to Vashon. We always said that Vashon is not about the building, but it’s about the people who were there. We decided that anything that we could do to save the school or keep it thriving, we were going to do.”
Vashon Principle, Michael K. Thomas, whom Irons describes as one of the best educational leaders that he had the pleasure of serving under, worked hard with Coach and all of the staff to put forth efforts to build programs that would make a case to keep the school going in spite of its pending closure. Thomas’ structures, coupled with a breakout period for Coaches ball program, started to show some real promise for Vashon.
In 1983 the Vashon High School Wolverines basketball team won their first of what would become 10 Missouri State Championships under “Coach” Floyd Irons. Irons was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. He had amassed over 800 victories with his teams making him the (winningest coach in the state’s history).
Interestingly when you ‘Google’ Coach Floyd Irons, the entire first pages are filled mostly with the stories of his pleading guilty to mail and wire fraud. If I’m not mistaken, Google does searches by most recent and most searched.
I told Coach that while posting on a popular performing arts discussion board, I made an entry regarding my upcoming interview with one of my heroes, Coach Floyd Irons. The site is frequented by a number of ‘out-state’, predominantly White readers and bloggers. . The replies showed some interesting data, so I did some probing. Many of the bloggers got their insight from either the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or KSDK News.
From those media sources, most believed that Coach had been “convicted” of misappropriation of school funds and/or illegal recruitment. Very, very few had any real knowledge of his guilty plea to the actual charges. Sadly, that is our media and how it contributes to the division of people across our state.
I told Coach, “the reason that I do these interviews with my heroes for my publication, is because I give less than a damn about how they are portrayed by false media or perceived by those who have no idea about the true person. My intention is to give people insight about the men or women that I have come to know very well through actually talking with them, face to face and hearing their incredible lives through their words.”
I told Coach that he was an inspiration to me when I instructed the Normandy High School Drum Lines from 1982 - '89. When I saw what he did with kids that were from difficult circumstances, it pushed me to help the youth at Normandy feel the esteem of achievement. There is nothing better for these kids than that.
His reach was boundless.
