Ronny Massey was the kind of coach who never really clocked out. Friends and former players say his mind was always drawing up the next play, whether he was standing on a practice field, riding a team bus, or, in at least one memorable instance, sitting in a courtroom.
During Massey’s years leading Citronelle, a sideline altercation during a football game led to charges being filed by the Mobile County School System against someone not affiliated with the coaching staff. Massey and assistant coach Rotch Dungan had to attend the hearing. While Dungan listened closely to the legal proceedings, Massey had other things on his mind.
“Seems like we had been tinkering with how to block a new screen play,” Dungan recalled. “I’m locked in, listening to what was being said, and Ronny’s over there with his notepad drawing up plays and asking me, ‘Can we do this? What do you think?'”
That relentless drive to out-plan the opposition defined Massey’s decades in coaching, according to those who knew him best. Leroy coach Jason Massey, Ronny’s nephew, said football strategy was a constant thread running through family life.
“I grew up listening to him and my dad,” Jason Massey said. “At some point at any family function, they’d be sitting at a table drawing up X’s and O’s on a napkin and talking football. He always tried to learn new stuff. One summer, I helped him at a camp at Auburn. Other coaches would go out after the camp and have a good time. I remember we’d go into the Auburn coaches’ office and watch game tape to learn something new that would win football games.”
The game planning didn’t stop until the team’s bus pulled up for kickoff, according to former Citronelle All-State quarterback and current Saraland coach Jeff Kelly.
“When we played on the road, the quarterback sat beside him on the bus,” Kelly said. “He’d go through the game plan. He had a lot of reminders for me and helped me understand when he called a play what he was wanting to do with it.”
Kelly’s arrival as a talented passer helped push Massey, a former wishbone quarterback himself, toward a more pass-oriented offense. That shift was aided by Massey’s relationship with Florida State coach Bobby Bowden and defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews, who had coached Massey in college at Livingston. Through that connection, Massey gained access to Florida State’s passing playbook during the era when Heisman Trophy winner Charlie Ward led the Seminoles to the 1993 national championship.
“He was on the cutting edge of offense,” Kelly said. “He’d go visit their camp and come back with some four-wide schemes. That was a pretty big deal. He was ahead of his time a little bit. He had a great system.”
Dungan, who coached the offensive line at Citronelle and now does the same at Saraland, said the shift toward a passing attack required its own adjustments up front.
“Ronny wanted the offensive linemen to be physical and aggressive, nothing fancy — just get after folks,” Dungan said. “We weren’t going to finesse anybody. We wanted to knock you around and bully you a little. Until Jeff came around, we didn’t throw much, so coach had me go up and work with [offensive line] coach [Rick] Trickett at Auburn to find ways to protect Jeff because we had never pass protected anything.”
Beyond scheme, players and assistants describe Massey as someone who was deeply loyal to the people around him.
“He was fiercely protective,” Kelly said. “You always knew coach had your back.”
That loyalty extended to helping shape careers well beyond his own program. Jason Massey said he wasn’t planning on coaching until his uncle intervened in the early 1990s.
“I give him a lot of credit for getting me into the business,” Jason Massey said. “Mike Turk was recruiting for Troy and he came through Citronelle and my uncle told him about me. I was a student at Troy. He called me and I became a volunteer coach. I was planning on being an engineer, and after helping for a year, I decided to change my major to education so I could coach.”
Jeff Kelly leaned on Massey again years later, when he took his first head coaching job at Satsuma in 2004 without having first served as an assistant.
“We all have people in coaching that we call to bounce ideas off of, and for years coach Massey was that guy for me,” Kelly said. “Situations and damage control are always a part of the job. Becoming a head coach without being an assistant, I needed a mentor. I could always call him up and ask him whatever. In my early years, he was invaluable to me when something came up.”
Massey died in 2010, and Kelly said he has continued to stay close with Massey’s wife, Helen “Ace” Massey, in the years since.
“She knows more about football and dealing with teams than most men I know,” Kelly said. “We have always stayed in touch and she always reaches out to talk and check on all our family and our other coaches that have Citronelle ties. They have been like a second family to me, and I don’t know if I would have lasted without their advice over the years.”
Dungan, who played linebacker and offensive line in high school but had never coached before joining Massey’s staff, said Massey took a chance on him early on.
“I told him I never had [coached],” Dungan said of his interview to help with Citronelle’s freshman team. “He said, ‘If you can coach the offensive line, you’ll always have a job.’ I was just married, so that sounded good to me. Forty-one years later, it’s worked out.”
By his third year coaching the freshman team, Dungan moved up to the varsity staff after the previous offensive line coach left.
“I think my biggest contribution up to then was when he’d get mad and throw his hat on the ground, I’d pick it up and brush it off,” Dungan joked.
Massey was never a hands-off boss. Jason Massey said his uncle believed a head coach needed to be present for everything he asked of his players.
“At some places, maybe an assistant coach runs the weight room,” Jason Massey said. “He felt the head coach should be present in everything the players were involved in. They needed that commitment from him if he was asking for that commitment from them.”
That work ethic matched well with Citronelle’s roster, many of whom worked demanding jobs outside of football.
“Our kids would come in to work out and they were covered in mud from logging all day,” Dungan said. “They weren’t going to work out any harder than that.”
Massey held every player to the same standard regardless of status on the roster, a philosophy that Kelly said bonded the team together.
“He always had the same expectations of all the players, regardless if you were the starting quarterback or a sub or a young guy trying to figure out his way,” Kelly said. “Every guy felt part of the team and that they had a huge role. It was such a fun time.”
That even-handed approach applied to family, too. Current Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall, whose mother was a Massey, played for his relative at Grissom High School in Huntsville and said there was never a hint of favoritism.
“He went above and beyond to see to it there was never any favoritism toward me,” Sumrall said. “He coached me harder than anybody. He came up with names for me. He called me ‘Precious.’ He’d say, ‘Hey Precious, come over here.'”
Sumrall said he absorbed several of Massey’s coaching traits, including a constructive tone and a refusal to curse at players.
“He was extremely intense but a great teacher,” Sumrall said. “That is what I took away from him the most. He cared about being thorough and helping someone grasp something new. He still taught algebra when he coached us, and most coaches try to get out of the classroom.”
Sumrall, who went on to sign with Kentucky and led the Wildcats in tackles as a senior linebacker before eventually becoming a head coach himself, said Massey’s daily routine still shapes his own approach to the profession.
“It is the teaching part, the way he cared about his players that was bigger than the game,” Sumrall said. “The game is a great teacher on how to handle adversity, to grow as a man, to sacrifice. Ronny used the game to create better people, and I have carried that over to my career.”
Sumrall credited Massey with getting more out of his players than their talent alone would suggest.
“I’m probably a great example of that,” he said. “He had a way of instilling confidence and a belief and toughness in his players. I was an overachieving player, and I think he was too, and that resonated with who he became as a coach. He would challenge you to be at your best daily. He’d put you in a position to have success so you would believe in yourself. He did it every day. My freshman year, I was on the varsity, not because I was good but because we weren’t very good. We went 1-9. Coach Massey came in and a few years later we were 12-2. I’ll carry that with me forever. I wouldn’t be who I am and where I am without him.”
More than a decade after his death, Massey’s fingerprints remain visible across South Alabama football, from the sidelines at Saraland and Leroy to programs well beyond the state, carried forward by the coaches and players who once sat beside him drawing up the next play.