Murphy – Since retiring in June 2021, former Murphy High School football coach David Gentry said he does three things.
“I play a lot of golf, I travel quite a bit and I go to the doctor quite a bit,” Gentry said.
True to form, next week Gentry is headed to Switzerland for a cruise down the Rhine River as well as a stop in Amsterdam. But before that, he’ll head to the Embassy Suites Hotel in Cary to be part of this year’s class of the N.C. High Athletic Association Hall of Fame. It’s the fifth Hall of Fame Gentry has been inducted into, but the first since he retired.
When he was inducted while still coaching, Gentry said he couldn’t think much about it. He had another game or another season to prepare for.
Today, the 77-year-old can reflect on just how much work and how many people were involved in his success. You don’t win a North Carolina state-record 426 games, including 361 wins and nine state championships in 38 years at Murphy, all by yourself.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” Gentry said. “I was thinking the other day, even when we didn’t do well I had great kids and a great staff. I don’t think I ever really had a bad staff in 50 years (of coaching).”
This Hall of Fame induction is unique in that Gentry is in the same class as one of his biggest rivals, former Swain County coach Boyce Dietz. The pairs’ tenures at their respective school overlapped for 14 years from 1983-96, when the two teams dominated the Smoky Mountain Conference.
When Gentry took over at Murphy in 1983, there was still a 1A and 2A Smoky Mountain Conference before Murphy and Swain County moved down to 1A starting in 1985. That started a 12 year run in which both teams won four state championships and combined to play in the 1A title game 11 times. The Bulldogs and Maroon Devils met 16 times during that span, with each team winning eight times.
Starting in 1987, Murphy-Swain County was the final game of the regular season for 28 straight years. If both teams had strong years, that meant a conference championship was on the line – and a solid likelihood that they would meet again in the playoffs.
“Everyone in the whole community knew this is going to be it,” Dietz said. “When they’d come an hour before the game, the stand was full and there was a tension in the air.”
It was incredibly hard to win at the other team’s stadium. In 1987, the Bulldogs were led by future NFL wide receiver Carl Pickens and entered Bryson City on a 24-game winning streak, but Swain County pulled off a 27-23 upset, a game
Deitz said was one of the great wins of his coaching career.
Two weeks later, in front of the biggest crowd Gentry had ever seen and on the coldest night he ever coached, the Bulldogs went back to Swain County and dominated for a 47-6 win on their way to a second straight state championship.
“You know how focused those kids were?” Gentry said. “I did not hear one kid say how cold it was on the coldest night I’d ever coached.”
The Maroon Devils dominated the next three years thanks to future NFL quarterback Heath Shuler, but for the final six years of Gentry-Dietz clashes, only the home teams prevailed. That included three playoff matchups.
In 1991, a field goal by Johnny Cook in the final seconds gave Murphy a third round win on the way to a state title. In the same round in 1996, Jonathan Collins’ touchdown in the second quarter was the only score of the game, the first of three straight Bulldogs shutouts to finish off an undefeated state championship season.
Both Dietz and Gentry admitted that by the end it was about who could execute and make plays in the right moments. Neither team tried to trick the other.
Murphy would run the Wing-T offense and a 4-3 defense, while Swain County would run the veer and the 5-2. That mentality only grew the respect between the two teams, both coaches said, and made them better. Games like that are what Gentry misses, though he has 50 years of memories to sift through.
“Some of the best two hours of my life have been spent from Friday night from 7:30-9:30,” he said. “It was the best high you’d ever get and the feeling you get, the rush that you had in that game, on that sideline, is awesome.”