Fayetteville football icon, one of the winningest coaches in NC Bob Paroli dies at 90
Bob Paroli, one of the winningest high school coaches North Carolina has ever seen and a Fayetteville football icon, died Monday at age 90.
"He was the standard by which everybody measured their success," said Scotland coach Richard Bailey, who has taken his teams to six state championships. "Everybody knew they had to get good or they were going to be embarrassed.
"He’s just a great man. We had many a battle between our teams. He made me a better coach."
For several years, Paroli was at the top of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association's all-time wins list. Most of those victories came at Douglas Byrd, where he took the Eagles to five state championships, including three straight from 1995-97.
RELATED: Here's a look at Fayetteville's winningest coaches in high school sports history
Paroli broke through with a state championship title in 2008 with Seventy-First. That win came against his former team, Douglas Byrd, 28-7.
He retired in 2012 with 403 victories.
"Bob was legendary," said Seventy-First principal Myron Williams. "He could do some things with a small group of kids that very few could do. He knew how to get the best out of those young men."
Current Trinity Christian football coach Chuck Webster was one of those young men.
"When I first entered his program, I was a 15-year-old kid, raised in a one-parent home, didn't have a lot of guidance from a male figure, didn’t understand what growing to be a man was about, not a lot of confidence, not a lot of purpose: Coach Paroli filled all those voids," Webster said.
A member of Byrd's 1994 East Region championship team, Webster has gone on to win North Carolina Independent School Athletic Association titles leading Trinity Christian.
"I owe him so much. I owe that program and that family a lot. He gave me the blueprint and I’m just trying to carry it out. Lives can be changed."
After Paroli's announcement that he would retire, NCHSAA Associate Commissioner Rick Strunk told Observer reporter Earl Vaughan that Paroli was one of the greatest football coaches the state had ever seen.
“His combination of longevity and success will be hard to equal,” Strunk said of the NCHSAA Hall of Famer.
Brad Edwards, a member of the Super Bowl XXVI champion Washington Redskins who starred on Paroli's first Douglas Byrd state finalist team in 1983, told Vaughan: "Bob will go down as one of the great all-time coaches in any sport. I don't think you will ever be able to truly quantify the number of lives he's impacted in a positive way throughout his career.''
NFL veteran and Clemson's All-American defensive back Donnell Woolford also played for Paroli as a 1984 graduate from Byrd.
Paroli's coaching stops included Benson (1958-64), Jacksonville (1964-65), New York Military Academy (1965-71), Wilson Fike (1971-76) and Burlington Cummings (1976-80) before his 25-year stint at Byrd.
He was an offensive tackle on the ACC championship-winning N.C. State football team in 1957. He had rejoined the team after leaving school following the 1952 season to enlist in the Army.
His wife Billie died last March at age 93. They were married 67 years and had three children — Tony, Michael and Terri — and eight grandchildren.
Paroli's legacy as one of the greatest ever to wear the whistle will continue to inspire.
"It’s so evident how vital he was to my life as I try to have that same impression on the guys I've been blessed to teach," Webster said.
"Once you get older, you really start reflecting on peoples purpose and who God puts into your life.
"I’m very grateful for everything."
Sports editor Monica Holland can be reached at mholland@fayobserver.com.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Longtime Fayettville area high school football coach Bob Paroli dies
