Second Ward High football coach earns hall of fame nod

SECOND WARD HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Second Ward High football coach Robert Montgomery with running back Jimmie Kirkpatrick (left) and quarterback Andrew Watson won the 1964 North Carolina High School Athletic Conference state title.

As an All-CIAA quarterback at North Carolina Central, Robert “Al” Montgomery stood out.

At 6-foot-4, 235 pounds, that physical stature also gave Montgomery a presence as a coach and physical education teacher at Charlotte’s Second Ward High.

“He absolutely had a presence in any room he entered,” said Mecklenburg County commissioner Arthur Griffin, a 1965 Second Ward graduate. “Not only was he a coach but he was a physical education teacher. His physical stature created respect, but he also was as kind as a big teddy bear. He had a big voracious belly laugh that you could hear all over the football field or the gymnasium.

“And, as a teacher, he taught about grit and persistence and determination and was a classic teacher of those traits. He was always trying to get the very best out of you, whether it was on the football field or in physical education activities.”

Montgomery, a three-sport athlete at Highland High in Gastonia, was a star before he became “Big Al” the legendary coach. On May 4, Montgomery will be inducted to the Gaston County Sports Hall of Fame alongside Danny Anderson, Steve Culbertson and Hester Martin Haynes. Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes will be the featured speaker at the Gastonia Conference Center.

A 1953 Highland High graduate, Montgomery was a three-sport standout in football, basketball and baseball who helped the Rams win two state titles in baseball (1951 and 1952) and advance to championship games in football (1949) and basketball (1952). He enrolled at NCCU (then North Carolina College) and was starting quarterback on the Eagles’ CIAA championship teams in 1953, 1954 and 1956 and earned All-CIAA in 1956. In 1984, the school honored Montgomery with induction on the NCCU Hall of Fame.

PROVIDED PHOTO

Robert Montgomery was a three-sport standout at Highland High who went on to quarterback North Carolina Central to three CIAA titles before winning the 1963 state title as Second Ward High coach.

After college, Montgomery served in the Army from 1958-60 before being invited to a tryout for the first-year AFL’s Boston (now New England) Patriots as an end. After being released, he was hired as an assistant coach at Allen University.

In the summer of 1961, Montgomery was hired at Second Ward, Charlotte’s oldest Black high school, as head football coach and physical education teacher. At Second Ward, he inherited one of the school’s two eventual NFL players – defensive back Randy Staten – and would soon coach one of the greatest breakaway runners in North Carolina high school history. That player, Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, would help Montgomery’s Tigers win the 1963 state title with an 8-0-1 record.

“I knew about Big Al before I got to Second Ward because he played local baseball and he was one of the best athletes around,” Kirkpatrick said. “When I got to Second Ward, we were coming off a tough year (0-8-1) the year before. I don’t know that he knew a lot about me, so it was important to make a good impression. And we turned it around. I really respected coach. He had a great sense of the game, and I learned a lot from him.”

Kirkpatrick would go on to greater importance in local and state history by being among the first Black players to integrate formerly all-white schools. In the process, he left Montgomery and Second Ward behind to play at Myers Park.

In 1965, while Kirkpatrick was leading the Mustangs to an 11-0 record and a state title, Second Ward slipped to 5-4 after back-to-back conference titles. Even more devastating was the decision that Second Ward would be closed after the 1968-69 school year when Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools fully desegregated.

But Kirkpatrick says his coach never questioned his decision to leave for Myers Park.

“He was always very supportive,” said Kirkpatrick, who went on to play at Purdue and presents an annual award to top Mecklenburg County student-athletes in his honor at the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. “Over the years, every time I’d come home, I’d look him up.”

Montgomery’s coaching career ended after the 1967 season and he finished a 31-year career in CMS as a driver education teacher at West Mecklenburg, Garinger, West Charlotte and South Mecklenburg.

“That was kind of unfortunate because I was hoping he’d get another chance to coach again,” Kirkpatrick said. “I do not know if he didn’t want to or anything like that. But just knowing coach and how competitive he was, I felt like he would’ve wanted to coach again.”

Griffin, who leads the Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation, said the school had a collective mourning when Montgomery died at 74 after an extended illness in 2008.

“He was always coaching and nurturing his students and his athletes,” Griffin said. “That’s why the memories of Big Al’ are etched with me for a lifetime. Even though he was on the athletic side of things at the school, the skills that he taught you were transferable to the academic side – and in life.”

Comments