FIRESIDE CHATS: Kelly Gentry has been by her husband's side for nearly all of historic run

    Peachtree – It’s a cliche that there’s a good woman behind every good man for a reason – mostly because it’s often true.
    Kelly Gentry has been there for all but 16 of her husband’s victories at Murphy, which make up the lion’s share of his North Carolina-best 413 wins. But like every great coach, David Gentry did not get to the top of the high school heap alone.
    Kelly Thompson played basketball and volleyball, as well as running track, for Murphy until graduating in 1982. The Lady Bulldogs basketball team made the fourth round of the state playoffs in her senior year, when she was coached by Karen Watson.
    As for football, the Bulldogs were not too strong during her time. Murphy went 0-10 in 1981 after winning just three games the year before.
    “People just went to the games to socialize back then,” Kelly said. “But he turned it around pretty quickly.”
    She was doing her student teaching at Murphy as part of her program at Western Carolina University when she met her husband in 1986, who had already been the Bulldogs’ head coach for three seasons.
    They met in March and were married by December, which means their 33-year anniversary is coming up in a matter of weeks. They have never known a world together where her husband was not the head Dog.
    Gentry won the first two of his eight state championships in 1986 and 1987, the first two seasons they were together.
    Gentry recorded his 400th and 413th wins against Swain County, the one Smoky Mountain Conference team that has a winning record against him. In 1987, the Bulldogs lost at Swain County, 27-23, to end the regular season.
    “We couldn’t understand it, because we had a tremendous team,” Kelly said. “We played them again in the playoffs, and David said he knew they would win this time because the boys on the bus were focused and all business.”
    Murphy won the second meeting, 47-6.
    Any time you coach that long, some of the games are going to be tough. But there has been a lot more winning than losing.
    “He handles losses better than I do, to tell the truth,” Kelly said. “He usually winds up consoling me.”
    The biggest question on the minds of many in Murphy is whether this is Gentry’s last hurrah as coach.
    “I don’t know,” Kelly said. “I don’t think he knows. I think he knows he’s getting close. It’s a lot of folks in the community who always encourage him and say, ‘Come on, coach, one more year.’ There are a lot of people who tell him that their kids are coming up as freshman, and they want him to coach them.”
    Gentry joked during a Cherokee County Board of Education meeting earlier this year that someone said that – only his son was just 2 years old.
    “He originally was going to stay at least until our son (Davis) was a senior, and now he is in grad school,” Kelly said. “So that came and went.”
    Kelly said her husband takes time to calm down at the end of the season before making any permanent decisions about his future.
    “Right after it’s over, you’re tired, you just want out,” she said. “He likes to rest his brain because it’s so much work. We talked about the hours he puts in, and it’s unbelievable.”
    Kelly is retired, but she helps out part time with the school system, including working as a counselor at Peachtree Elementary School. Her daughter Lauren has also been a counselor in the school system, and today she works in career development for middle schools.
    As for post-coaching life, Kelly said she and her husband would like to travel in the United States, as they have already seen several other countries. But she does not have a specific vision of what things will look like, save for one.
    “I see golf courses in his future,” she said. “That’s really what he’s always done for downtime. That’s how he lets his mind rest.”
    The Gentrys have planned their travel around football games, practices and training sessions for more than three decades.
    “We have a very small window,” she said. “There is a dead period week in July during summer workouts when we always try to take a vacation.”
    With the record behind him, coach Gentry can focus on what he really cares about – getting his boys moving toward another potential state title.
    “When he was going for 400 wins, he told me he just wanted to get it over with,” Kelly said. “I don’t think he has even really reflected much on that one yet.”
    Like so many good coaches, Gentry is already on to the next one.
    “I said something about the Swain game the other day, and he said, ‘That game is over, I’m working on Rosman now,’ ” she said.
    As for that historic game Friday, Kelly could feel it coming when Murphy scored its final touchdown.
    “I just felt like we were good,” she said “I knew after the guy jumped that he would go for two, and I knew we would make it. You could not have written a script better.”