HPU coaching legend Steele dies at 82

Jul. 13—HIGH POINT — Jerry Steele was remembered Monday as an intelligent problem solver with a humorous wit and someone who cared about his players deeply.

Steele, who became the face of High Point College and then High Point University athletics during a long tenure as head basketball coach and athletic director, died Sunday, the university announced on Monday. He was 82 and had been in declining health.

Hired in 1972, Steele spent a school-record 31 seasons as the men's head basketball coach and served as athletics director for the first 26 of those years. Before coming to High Point, he was head basketball coach at Guilford College and on the coaching staff of the American Basketball Association's Carolina Cougars for two seasons.

He is survived by his wife, Kitty, who was a coach at HPU for many seasons. The school's main athletics administration building is named for the Steeles. Flags at the Steele Athletic Center were lower to half-staff Monday.

Funeral arrangements are to be announced.

"He was a mentor to a lot of people, a friend to a lot of people," said Woody Gibson, who was a student manager for Steele at Guilford in the 1960s and served under Steele in a variety of roles at HPU from 1975 until he succeeded Steele as AD in 1998. "He was just a great man who passed on life lessons to anybody and everybody. He was a larger-than-life figure in many respects but a principled man who put others first."

As a basketball coach at HPU, Steele finished with a 457-412 mark that set school records for most wins and losses by far. He had 16 winning seasons and won six conference championships, five in the NAIA-level Carolinas conference and one after the Carolinas Conference moved to NCAA Division II in the 1990s.

Current HPU head coach Tubby Smith was a starting guard on Steele's first team for the 1972-73 season, the third consecutive season that the Panthers had a coaching change.

"When he first got here, he was standing behind this Tartan floor," Smith said Monday. "He's watching me work out, and I can't make a shot. He comes over and says, 'Son, they tell me you're supposed to be my best player and you can't make a shot, what's going on?' I told him that he made me nervous. And he said, 'You have to get over that 'cause I'm going to be at every practice and every game.' That really broke the ice.

"That's the kind of thing he could say. I'm on edge because he's my third coach in three years. And he made me so relaxed, and I knew then how much he cared about his players. That's why we love him, everyone that played for him or worked for him. He could make you feel good about yourself even in losing situations. He was the best I'd ever known doing that."

Steele's combined record of 609-468 at Guilford and High Point led to his place in the NAIA Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame, and the Wake Forest University Sports Hall of Fame — he played at Wake Forest 1958-61. He was also part of the first class selected to the High Point University Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.

"He was able to stay even-tempered, unlike someone like me who has to let things out, but still got his point across," Smith said. "He tried to teach you not to get too high or not to get too low

Gibson remembered one situation in the Guilford days that typified how much Steele cared for his players.

"When I was a student there, one of the players had issues with his mental health and drug use," Gibson said. "Coach Steele took it upon himself to help the young man and drove him home to his mom's house when he was unable to do it himself and then flew back to Greensboro."

Smith recalled that Steele helped him get his first coaching job in North Carolina at Hoke County High in Raeford. He said he tried to visit Steele at least once a year.

Smith also said after he became coach at Kentucky, he insisted that the Wildcats play guarantee games against the Panthers twice as a way to repay Steele and the school.

Under Steele's direction, the Panthers program was a powerhouse in the Carolinas Conference, which became the Carolinas-Virginia Conference. HPU won the Jody Hawn Cup as the conference's best program 12 times from 1975-1996.

"I had a lot of good people who worked for me as coaches," Steele told the Enterprise in 2015 before his HPU Hall of Fame induction. "They all wanted the best for the school like I did and worked very hard at it."

Near the end of his tenure as AD, Steele guided HPU through six seasons as an NCAA Division II school and laid the groundwork for its jump to NCAA Division I in 1999.

"You could always go in and talk to him," Gibson said. "In addition to being a smart man, he had a lot of common sense and ways of figuring things out. He tried to work through problems rather than just shut you down and say, 'We can't do that.' He worked with you as long as possible trying to make something happen rather than just not doing it.

"He was good in that respect. He went to bat for athletics often for scholarships and budgetary reasons as well as getting more positions for assistant coaches and staffing positions in the athletics department. He was very much appreciated by those who worked for him in the athletics department at High Point.

Jerry M. Steele was born March 10, 1939, in Elkin and was a standout at Elkin High School. He played at Wake Forest and as a senior was co-captain of the Deacons' 1961 ACC championship team that reached the East regional final in the NCAA tournament.

After earning a master's degree from UNC Chapel Hill, he became men's basketball coach at Guilford and turned the Quakers' struggling program into an NAIA power that won two conference titles, four district championships and four appearances in the NAIA national tournament.

In 1969-70, Guilford won 29 straight games, went 32-5 and lost the NAIA third-place game.

The following season, he became an assistant coach with the Cougars under his head coach at Wake Forest, Bones McKinney. Steele served a half-season as interim head coach after McKinney was fired, then returned to assistant coach the next season, which was his last with the club.

He then became head coach and AD at High Point College.

"Once I came here, I never wanted to leave," Steele said in 2015. "I never applied anywhere after I got here. The pay was so-so, but I was glad to have a job.

"Dr. Murphy Osborne, the vice president of student affairs, was the guy who hired me and the one I answered to. I'll forever be thankful that I got to work for him."

gsmith@hpenews.com — @HPEgreer — 336-888-3519

gsmith@hpenews.com — @HPEgreer — 336-888-3519