PACE, Fla. — Mickey Lindsey was born in Whatley, went to school in Grove Hill, and spent 25 years building a football program 90 miles east. On Sept. 4, Pace High School put his name on its field.
Family, friends and former players were on hand for the ceremony before the game against Choctawhatchee.
Under Lindsey, Pace won 196 games, 10 district championships and advanced to three state semifinals.
The Path There
Lindsey played high school football at Grove Hill Academy, now Clarke Prep, and walked on at Livingston University, now the University of West Alabama.
He coached in Georgia and at schools in Escambia County, Florida, before accepting the Pace job in 1991.
Twenty-five years in one program is uncommon in high school coaching, and the reasons it is uncommon explain why the honor came.
Head coaching jobs at the high school level turn over frequently. Coaches move for better positions, better pay, better facilities or a shorter commute. Programs replace coaches after losing seasons. A coach who stays 25 years has survived multiple administrations, several generations of parents, and every kind of season a program can have.
What that longevity produces is something a successful short tenure cannot. A coach in year 20 is coaching the sons of players he coached in year one. He knows the families, the middle school feeder programs, the community’s expectations. The program he runs is his in a way a program run for four years never is.
What 196 Wins Means
Averaged across 25 seasons, 196 victories works out to roughly eight wins a year — a winning season nearly every year for a quarter century.
Ten district championships over that span means Lindsey’s teams won their district about 40 percent of the time. Three state semifinal appearances put the program among the last four in its classification in three separate seasons.
Consistency at that level is harder than a peak. Programs with more talent have had better single seasons. Very few sustain that standard for 25 years, through roster turnover, coaching staff changes and shifting classifications.
What He Said He Was Doing
Asked before Friday’s ceremony about the honor, Lindsey did not talk about the record.
“God called me to be a football coach, there’s no doubt in my mind, because it was a mission for me to help kids become better people and better citizens,” he said. “I’m proud of that more than anything else, to see some of these kids and how they turned out.”
That is a common sentiment from coaches, and it is worth noting when it comes from one whose record would let him talk about wins instead.
The measure Lindsey names is also the one that shows up at a ceremony like this. Former players were there. They did not travel back to Pace for a number in a record book.
The Next Generation
Lindsey’s son Jay Lindsey followed him into the profession and is the head coach at Walton High School in Defuniak Springs, Florida.
Coaching families are common in football, and the reason is straightforward. A child who grows up in a program — in film rooms, on practice fields, in the locker room after wins and losses — understands the job in a way that cannot be taught later. They also understand what it costs, which is the part that usually filters people out.
A Whatley Native
The distance between Whatley and Pace is not great in miles, but it spans a state line and two very different places.
Whatley is a small unincorporated community in Clarke County, in the timber country of southwest Alabama. Grove Hill, where Lindsey went to school, is the county seat, a town of roughly 1,300.
Pace is in Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle, near Pensacola, in an area that has grown substantially over the decades Lindsey coached there. The high school he arrived at in 1991 served a considerably smaller community than the one that named a field for him.
That growth is part of the story. A coach who stays through a community’s expansion has to keep a program competitive while everything around it changes — enrollment, classification, the level of competition, the expectations of a larger and more demanding population.
Naming a Field
Naming a stadium or field for a coach is among the more meaningful honors a school can confer, because of what it commits to.
A plaque goes on a wall. A trophy goes in a case. A name on a field appears on every schedule, every program, every set of directions and every broadcast, for as long as the school plays there. Students who never met the person will know the name.
Pace has now attached Lindsey’s name to the place where the program he built plays its games. The former players who came back for the ceremony will bring their own children to games there.
The Clarke County Connection
For readers in Clarke County, the recognition lands close to home. Lindsey played at Grove Hill Academy, now Clarke Prep, and grew up in Whatley.
Small communities produce people who go elsewhere and do notable things, and the connection frequently gets lost once the person leaves. Lindsey’s 25 years at Pace happened in Florida, but the coach who built that program came out of Clarke County.
South Alabama News congratulates Mickey Lindsey on the honor.