As one Hall calls, Odom reflects on coaching career

On a recent five-hour drive from Charlotte to his beach home in Emerald Isle, Dave Odom had plenty of time to reflect on a coaching career that will land him in the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame when the Class of 2009 is inducted today.

Or at least he would have, if the cell phone hadn’t kept ringing.

“I left Charlotte this morning, and I’ll bet you I’ve talked with 25 people in the car,” Odom said Friday. “It’s been one coach after the other calling me from all over the place, and a couple of my athletes calling. It’s just about different things.

“And it made me think, Lordamercy, from a career standpoint I’ve had the best life.”

A coach by vocation and a talker by avocation, Odom was reminded of what made him happiest during a career that started at Goldsboro High School in his hometown in 1964 and ended at the University of South Carolina after the 2007-08 season.

It wasn’t the 406 victories as a college head coach, the 240-132 record in 12 seasons at Wake Forest, the national-coach-of-the-year award in 1995 or the three ACC coach-of-the-year awards.

And it wasn’t the ACC championships the Deacons won in 1995 and 1996, or the 11 straight postseason appearances, the three NIT championships (one at Wake Forest, two at USC) or even the remarkable streak of Wake Forest’s nine straight victories over Duke during his time as coach.

“I am most proud of the relationships that I’ve made, fostered and kept,” Odom said. “My best friends in the world are my coaching friends, and I’ve got them everywhere, and the athletes I’ve coached, the relationships that I’ve gotten and I have kept with my athletes. I’ll tell you I am so fortunate to have that.

“When the wins and losses are counted, championship trophies and plaques are on the wall, the only thing that remains are the relationships and the memories that you have in search of those wins and championships. That’s the thing that remains. That’s the thing that lasts. And I’ve got more than enough for a lifetime.”

Natural leader
Born in Goldsboro on Oct. 9, 1942, Odom attended Guilford College, where he was recruited off the football team to play basketball when Coach Jerry Steele needed a point guard. And Odom was a good one.

“We needed a guard who could handle the ball and run the show,” Steele once explained. “And he did it much better than I anticipated anyone could, especially someone who had been away from it a year or so.

“He made all four players better, and he was content to do that. I guess the term is leadership.”

Odom returned to Goldsboro to coach football, basketball and baseball for four seasons before accepting the position as the head basketball coach at Durham High School. In Durham, he got to know Chuck Daly, then an assistant at Duke, who helped him secure a spot on the staff at the prestigious Five-Star Camp in Pennsylvania. That gave Odom the exposure he needed to break into the college ranks.

Odom is best associated with his 12 seasons at Wake Forest, where he took over a program that had had four straight losing seasons. His first team finished 12-16. His next seven averaged 22 victories and reached the NCAA Tournament.

Along the way, he recruited and coached some of the greatest players in school history: Rodney Rogers, Randolph Childress, Tim Duncan, Darius Songaila and Josh Howard.

“I think about the way it was when we came and the things that it took to build a program to where I thought was its rightful place among the elite in college basketball,” Odom said. “And then I think about the way it was when I left. It was in good shape.

“When I think about my time as a coach there, that’s what I’m proudest of, that it got better and better and better as we went along — and the fact we were able to sustain it for such a long period of time.”
Odom said he had not written his induction speech, and probably won’t, but he knows he has a number of people to thank. At the top of his list, he said, is his family, sons Ryan and Lane and most of all his wife, Lynn.

“I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get up there,” Odom said. “You know me. I’ll figure it out on the way up there.

“I never had a bad teacher. I never had a bad coach. And I never had a bad friend. All that said, the person that got me there — the one constant in my life — is Lynn Odom.

“She’s the best. I just totally appreciate that.”

Not surprisingly, both of his sons are coaches. Ryan Odom has been an assistant for Seth Greenberg at Virginia Tech for six seasons and Lane is a former assistant at Missouri who is now head coach at Charlotte Latin High School.

Still busy
Since retiring from South Carolina, Odom has remained busy raising money for Guilford, doing commentary for television and radio and writing a guest column for the Raleigh News & Observer. He attended the 2009 ACC Tournament in Atlanta, where he told media members he knew well from his days at Wake Forest that if he had realized they were having that much fun he would have stopped coaching to join them sooner.

He was kidding, of course. Even today, the competitive fires still burn.

“I’ve missed the games,” Odom said. “I’ve missed the competition. I’ve missed the feel of the crowd, and the music and the bands. I’ve missed that.”

He has missed other aspects of the profession perhaps even more.

“I really miss the practices,” Odom said. “I’ve been to a lot of coaches’ practices, and I miss the practices, the teaching.

“And I’ll tell you want else I’ve missed. I’ve missed the locker room, after practice. I miss talking to the equipment people, the trainers, the managers. The smell of the locker room, I miss that. Because that’s where everything is done.”

That sounds like a person who hasn’t closed, much less locked, the door on coaching again.

“So if I could find a place where it accentuates those things, and the panache of the game,” Odom said. “I miss the true substance of the game. I don’t miss the fluff that goes with that. If I could find that again, I’d probably do it.

“But everybody has a time to begin and a time to end. I may have reached that. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of my life. It may be time for something else. If it is, that’s OK.”

At 34, with a dozen years of experience coaching at Furman, UNC Asheville, American and Virginia Tech, Ryan Odom has been mentioned from time to time as a candidate for head-coaching jobs.
Odom was asked if he would consider returning to the game to coach on his son’s staff.

“I’d do it,” Odom said. “I’d do it in a minute if he asked me.”