Bridgers calls it a career

Aug. 09--The lessons he learned from some of the biggest names in Wilson high school coaching served Mickey Bridgers well for four decades.

Bridgers, a 1970 Fike graduate, announced Monday that he is stepping down as the varsity softball coach at South Johnston High, ending a coaching and teaching career that began in 1974 shortly after he graduated from Atlantic Christian (now Barton) College. During that 40-year span, Bridgers coached football, baseball and softball -- both slow pitch and fast pitch -- and served as athletic director at Northern Nash and South Johnston.

"I learned a long time ago that good players make good coaches and great players make great coaches," said the unassuming Bridgers, before adding with a laugh: "And bad players will get you fired!"

Bridgers led Northern Nash to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 4-A slow-pitch softball championship in 1987. In the fall of that school year, his Knights football team went 12-2 and reached the 4-A semifinals, losing to Fayetteville Seventy-First. Bridgers was named Associated Press Coach of the Year in 1986.

"So I was a pretty good coach that year!" he chuckled.

WORK COMES FIRST

While teaching and coaching would be his life's work, Bridgers didn't spend his youth playing sports.

There was too much work to be done on the nearby farm of his grandparents, Willie and Della Bridgers, just a few miles outside of Wilson on Highway 42 East. The home of his parents, Harrison and Carrie Bridgers, was a little ways down the road at the intersection of 42 and Highway 301 and Bridgers spent his afternoons and summers doing chores on the farm.

While that no doubt was a character-building experience, it slowed Bridgers' development as an athlete. He didn't make the football or baseball teams at Charles L. Coon Junior High.

"The only thing I ever made was the track team at Charles L. Coon (Junior High) and I hated that!" Bridgers said.

When he did finally make the football team at Fike, he wasn't able to play varsity because of his obligations on the farm. Cyclones head coach Henry Trevathan allowed Bridgers to report late, but he had to play on the junior varsity during his junior season in 1968.

Bridgers finally landed on the varsity squad as a senior, the third consecutive state 4-A championship season for Fike. Although he didn't see much playing time, Bridgers jokes that he did play a key role in the Cyclones' success.

"My job was to take Carlester home every day if he needed a ride," he said, referring to Fike star running back Carlester Crumpler, the centerpiece of those championship teams.

Although Bridgers never played baseball in high school, he was the team manager under head coach Gilbert Ferrell, including his sophomore year in 1968 when the Cyclones also won the state 4-A crown on the diamond.

Being around such luminaries as Ferrell and Trevathan, both of whom are in the NCHSAA and Fike halls of fame, inspired Bridgers to go into coaching.

"I got the fever once I was involved with Gilbert Ferrell and the baseball program and Henry Trevathan and the football program," he said.

Bridgers also credited other coaches at Fike during that time -- John Sasser, Bill Horton, Gus Andrews, Gary Whitman and Buddy Cayton -- as being influential.

"They were all big influences in my life and, kind of starving for an identity, I found it in athletics," he said.

He majored in physical education at Atlantic Christian and worked as an assistant baseball coach at Coon under first Larry Barrow and then Bob Hanna during that time. It would end up being his only stint as a coach in his hometown.

After graduation, Bridgers landed a job as a varsity football assistant coach and the junior high baseball coach at Kinston. He relied on a Fike connection, former Trevathan assistant John Green, whose brother Sam was the Kinston head football coach.

During his time in Kinston, Bridgers had one chance to return to Fike when Dick Knox, another Trevathan assistant, took over the football program after Bob Paroli left in 1976. Knox gave Bridgers a call and asked if he was interested in coming back to Fike, but with the head baseball job about to be his at Kinston, Bridgers and his wife, Pat, decided to stay where they were.

Those Fike connections were still rock solid for Bridgers, however.

"Whenever I wasn't sure what to do, I always called Gilbert Ferrell or Dick Knox to give me a little bit of wisdom," he said.

COMMITMENT TO COACHING

Ironically, two years later, Bridgers left Kinston and teaching and coaching to manage the new Sportsville sporting goods store owned by Wilson's Earl Boykin in Elizabeth City.

But he continued to maintain those relationships as well.

"Some of our best friends that Pat and I have now are the kids that I coached in Kinston," he said.

Bridgers ran the Elizabeth City Sportsville store for 2 { years and then got a job selling life insurance for six months when life dealt him a surprise: He was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1982.

But surgery revealed that he didn't have cancer and Bridgers emerged with a newfound dedication to the profession he left behind.

"I made a commitment to the Lord to go back to teaching and coaching and be a positive Christian example for young people," he said.

That took him to Northern Nash, where he spent the next 12 years as football and softball coach and athletic director. Needing a change of scenery, Bridgers and his wife and their two children Elizabeth and Heath moved to Four Oaks in 1994 when he was hired as football coach at South Johnston. He guided the Trojans for five years and was a baseball assistant coach for eight years.

Bridgers retired as a full-time teacher and AD at South Johnston in 2008 but returned to work part-time as a driver's education teacher and continue coaching the softball team.

Now that he's done coaching, he said he'll probably continue working part-time in driver's ed or possibly facility maintenance at South Johnston.

STEPPING ASIDE

"I've just kind of stepped aside so the younger coaches can move forward," said Bridgers, who will be succeeded by assistant coach Amanda Smith.

"When she came, I knew she was going to be an outstanding coach," said the 62-year-old Bridgers, who took over the Lady Trojans softball program in 2007 after the sudden death of head coach Gary Blackmon, a long-time friend of his. Bridgers has built a strong brand for softball at South Johnston, where his teams have won at least 20 games each of the past six seasons, including a 23-5 record this spring. The Lady Trojans lost in three games in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 3-A Eastern finals series to C.B. Aycock.

"It was probably the most pleasant coaching experience that I've ever had, even though we didn't win the state championship," he said. "We were all on the same page and every day at practice was a pleasant experience."

He also guided South Johnston to the 3-A final four in 2010.

"I coached baseball for about 23 years and there were a lot of similarities to baseball," Bridgers said of coaching fastpitch softball. "I was fortunate enough to be able to work with people who had experience pitching and everything else I could connect the dots."

The same lessons that he learned a long time ago at Fike.

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