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Lifetime Coach
Sparky Woods has landed on his feet at VMI after being out of coaching for the first time in 30 years
Photo Courtesy of VMI
Sparky Woods has been coaching football in one place or another for 30 years.
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Published: October 24, 2008
Sparky Woods didn't stay out of football long.
He spent part of last year on a family farm near Charlottesville, Va., after being swept out by a staff change at Alabama, where he had coached running backs for four years.
"I fed the horses, rode the tractor and cleaned the barn," Woods said.
Then he got a call, or maybe a reprieve, from Virginia Military Institute.
"I got kind of excited about it," said the 54-year-old Woods, who had done nothing other than coach for 30 years.
He was the head coach at Appalachian State for five seasons in the 1980s, the head coach at South Carolina for five seasons into the 1990s and an assistant at various places before and after.
"I thought about why I got into coaching in the first place, what the purpose was, and concluded if it literally is about the kids, then here was a great opportunity to make an impact."
He didn't pick the easiest job. VMI's stringent military and academic standards on top of the demands of playing football are not exactly a boon to recruiting. The Keydets haven't had a winning season since 1981.
But he said that the players are remarkable.
"For most of the kids I had been used to dealing with, the future to them was Friday night," Woods said. "These kids here literally are trying to invest in the rest of their life. School here isn't the easiest. I told them, ‘It looks to me that you all are winners, so our job is to try to help you win on Saturday.' That's what we're going to try to do."
And, dramatically enough, it's working.
Woods and VMI are fresh off a 47-20 victory against Coastal Carolina, one of the top programs in the Big South Conference in recent years. It was the first league win in three seasons for the Keydets, who are 3-3 overall heading into Saturday's game at Gardner-Webb.
It's early in the process, but Woods is optimistic.
"Getting players here is not easy," he said. "A lot don't want the military part of it, and a lot can't qualify academically. And developing players has been hard because it is challenging here, and we do lose players. Half of our football team right now are first-year players. We have four seniors who are playing their last year of eligibility.
"We have to somehow hold onto the players we've got, and obviously be good evaluators. I don't know that we have to be great recruiters because I'm not sure that we're going to beat many people on recruiting. A kid has to want to come here."
Winning might help. VMI left the tough Southern Conference in 2002 with hopes of winning more games, but, until this season, it hadn't happened. The Keydets won six games in four years before Woods' took over.
They're putting up some big numbers this season, leading the Big South in scoring (38.2 points a game) and rushing (357 yards a game) with a triple-option offense that fits a smaller lineup.
"We do have some speed," Woods said. "We're just little."
But the victory against Coastal Carolina, which came two weeks after the Keydets put up quite a fight against bowl-division program Ohio, was big.
"You'd thought we won the Super Bowl," Woods said. "It was a great accomplishment for these kids. It was a huge boost. We hadn't won a conference game since 2005."
With winnable league games against Charleston Southern, Stony Brook and Presbyterian remaining, the Keydets have a chance at finishing on the upside for the first time in years. And Woods is relishing in the opportunity.
"We're a long way from anybody picking us to win our league, we've got to keep proving ourselves," Woods said. "We did say we'd like to win some conference games, so some is more than one. That's our next goal."
■ Tommy Bowman can be reached at 727-7320 or at tbowman@wsjournal.com.
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