Murphy To hear people describe Bulldogs head football coach David Gentry, a few words come up over and over again. Legend. Great coach. GOAT.
(For those who don’t know, GOAT is an acronym for Greatest Of All Time.)
However, for students someone like Gentry appears to be in a different stratosphere. At least that’s what Murphy player Hunter Laney thought of Gentry when he was younger.
“He’s kind of like a superhero for a little kid,” Laney said.
Growing up, Laney always heard about Murphy football and how excited people would get when they talked about the Bulldogs. Under Gentry, it has become a point of pride, as he won 366 games in 38 years with nine state championships. As new generations of Bulldogs joined the team, they wanted to continue the winning tradition.
“Growing up here, people say, ‘I can’t wait to see you on coach Gentry’s team’ or ‘I can’t wait for you to play for coach Gentry’s team,’ ” Laney said. “It’s just always a legacy kind of thing to get to play for him and actually do stuff for him.”
How Gentry built that legacy is what set him apart and made him one of the greatest coaches in North Carolina high school football history. Bulldogs athletic director Ray Gutierrez, who graduated from Murphy in 1999 and played under Gentry, said one thing about him has never changed.
“He has not lost the competitive spirit,” Gutierrez said. “He’s the most competitive person I’ve ever seen. He hates to lose, and he takes great pride in getting his teams ready and putting the best product on the field as possible.”
That competitiveness translates over to the field, where Gentry has players believing they’ll win no matter what’s in front of them. Murphy always goes into a game expecting to win, something that isn’t the same for the other teams they compete against, according to public address announcer JR Carroll, who has seen every year of Gentry’s career from calling games on the radio to shouting, “First and 10, Bulldogs!”
“(Another coach) said here’s the difference between Murphy and some of the other schools,” Carroll said. “It doesn’t matter if the Dallas Cowboys are down on the field. When (Murphy) take(s) the field, Murphy thinks they’re going to win. It’s the attitude, and they built the attitude, and that’s what has carried it on.”
That competitive spirit and winning attitude is backed up by preparation both on and off the field. Heading into this year’s Western Regional final at Robbinsville, Gutierrez said Gentry’s coaches meetings were twice as long as usual. Gentry was confident that his team would win, despite the fact that the Black Knights were riding a 24-game winning streak and had beaten Murphy on the same field just three weeks earlier.
Sure enough, the Bulldogs beat Robbinsville, then Northside-Pinetown a week later in the final game of Gentry’s career. That same week, quarterback Kellen Rumfelt said his teammates were back in workouts, hungry to chase another championship. The way Gentry prepares rubbed off on his players.
“They say the grind doesn’t stop it does not stop here,” Rumfelt said. “The day after the season ended, people here were already working out.”
In sports, teams can sustain winning cultures, but it usually passes from one coach to another. That’s why what Gentry has done is so rare. He’s the common thread through all the success Murphy has had over nearly 40 years.
It’s why Gutierrez said he made sure his two sons were around Murphy football as much as they could be since he became athletic director. He wanted them to witness history. Gentry leaves Murphy with both the state’s all-time wins record and the most wins at a single school, and it’s hard to imagine another coach even getting close to those marks anytime soon.
“I don’t know if anybody can do it better over the long haul,” Gutierrez said. “He’s proven himself that he is the best football coach in North Carolina history.”