There are perhaps nicer wrestling facilities in the state – some of them costing upwards of $1 million – but none could have received more tender loving care than Soddy-Daisy’s.
There is probably more than a million in the once-decrepit gym on Old Dayton Pike, the facility that once served the Soddy-Daisy community as a focal point for high school basketball and to a much lesser extent a fledgling wrestling program.
That million, though, is sweat equity, most of which has gushed from Steve Henry’s brow.
The wrestling Trojans’ coach for close to 30 years, Henry has been a blue-collar guy representing the best in a blue-collar community. He continues in that style as Soddy-Daisy High’s athletic director and an assistant principal.
That old gym, once all but abandoned by the county, is the home to bootstrap wrestling at its finest and a program that Henry nurtured from infancy to maturity as one of the state’s traditional wrestling powers: 24 state champions, 73 state medalists; four state duals titles and three other finals appearances; traditional state team champions in 2006, 2007 and 2012 along with runner-up finishes in 1999, 2001-2004, 2009 and 2013; 28 region team championships.
Later this week they’ll name the arena and likely the adjoining football-turned-soccer field in Henry’s honor.
What he has done over the years – from painting and patching to roofing and plunging, mopping, mowing and even masonry – he did for the community and the sports he came to love, and he doesn’t know how to feel about a public acknowledgement of his efforts, much less his achievements.
“It makes me uneasy,” he said. “I don’t even put my name on my mailbox. It isn’t that I’m not appreciative. I’m just not comfortable with it.”
You see, when Steve first started as a struggling wrestling coach it was more about him than the kids, the program or the community. He learned rather quickly as he took on new responsibilities that there were things more important than his own chest-thumping. He left that to others and dedicated his life to the betterment of the sport and his young charges – life’s lessons, and if they came with a state medal, then all the better.
Soddy-Daisy coach Steve Henry {CQ} calls out to a wrestler during a match Tuesday. Soddy-Daisy wrestled against Walker Valley at Soddy-Daisy on Tuesday evening.“It was all about me,” he remembers. “Then I guess I grew up.”
A Henry disciple, Jake Yost, won three state championships for the Trojans before enjoying a NCAA-qualifying career at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Now the coach at Cleveland High, another of the state’s premier programs, Yost paid his mentor one of the ultimate compliments, naming his son Fox Henry.
“We have always had such a great relationship, and he has been such a positive mentor in my life,” Yost said. “I don’t want to make it out to be some huge, gooey, sappy thing. He’s just been a real important person to me for a long time. I hope some of the things that Steve Henry instilled in me I’ll be able to instill in my son.”
Those who know him well know that Henry can be, to put it politely, a taskmaster. He also has been a confidant, supporter and friend to untold thousands.
“He has a really good way of teaching about the bigger picture,” Yost said. “If you wrestled for him, it’s like wrestling’s important but it’s also academics, family and doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. I feel it all the time.
“I have tried to have the same ideals: There are bigger things than high school wrestling. Wrestling is what he’s known for, but it’s just one of many things he should be known for.”
Said Army coach Kevin Ward, who was an All-American at Oklahoma State after competing for Henry: “He had a huge impact on my life. What I remember most was that he held the team to a high standard and expected the team to hold each other accountable. We had strong teams because of that, and even when we fell short he never gave up on anybody.”
Henry taught by example and used a balanced approach.
“Without preaching every day, he showed and lived what he taught,” Yost said. “He also believes strongly in relationships, and developing those relationships is probably the second-most important thing he instilled in me.”
Added Ward: “What made him such a good coach was that he wasn’t a prideful coach. He knew his strengths and weaknesses and put his athletes above himself.”
Times have changed. The mullet, he finally learned, had gone out of style, and while the hairline recedes with each passing sunrise, the belt might have been eased a notch or two.
This is a man who learned from the best, a group that includes former UTC coaches Jim Morgan and Ethan Reeve, veteran coach Gordon Connell and legendary Baylor coach Luke Worsham, whom Henry held in highest esteem.
“It’s amazing how many people across Tennessee and the Southeast know him or know of him,” offered Ashley Brooks, Henry’s longtime assistant. “He has influenced untold numbers of students and not just wrestlers, and there’s no way to put a number out there for the kids he has helped even after they left school. If a kid needed help, he was there to help in any way he could.”
There are youngsters out there who maybe didn’t buy into what he was offering, “but they always came back whether it was the next day, the next month, the next year or even 10 years down the road,” Yost said.
This is a side of Henry that few outside his sphere of influence get to see, because while he is hard-working, he is also humble and it hasn’t been about him in probably three decades.
He wishes it would stay that way.
“I feel embarrassed,” Henry repeated. “A friend once said you don’t get something named after you unless you’re old or dead. Maybe they should’ve waited till I was dead.”
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.