After twenty years of coaching and teaching service at Northeast Guilford and 35 years overall in coaching and teaching, Northeast Guilford Rams’ head football coach Tommy Pursley will retire on December 30…
Coach Pursley told his team today and one of our posters had left this news with us earlier this evening and I just got off of the phone with Coach Pursley and he will step down from coaching and teaching on December 30 and in effect he will be retired from the North Carolina school system….
For Coach Pursley, he put in 35 years of coaching and teaching, with 20 of those spent at the helm of the Northeast Guilford Rams’ football team and he won right at 180 games in the 20 years he spent coaching football at NEG…That averages out to 9 wins a season over the 20-year span and his Ram teams never missed the playoffs and only two other teams in the state of North Carolina have matched that record in the 20-year time frame and that has been the Thomasville Bulldogs and the Dark Horses of Clinton…
NEG won 7 conference titles under Coach Pursley’s leadership, 6 district titles and 2 Regional Titles….NEG won the East Regional in 1997 and faced Kannapolis in the State 3-A Championship and Northeast claimed the East Region again in 2003 and met South Point that year for the 3-A Title..
The revealing part of the overall equation is that Northeast never missed the playoffs in the 20 years that Coach Pursley was in charge of the football program…The year before Coach Pursley came in, the NEG Varsity went (1-9( and the JV’s were (0-10) and the year that Coach Pursley took over(1993), the NEG Varsity finished (6-4) and the JV’s went (10-0)…
The Northeast Guilford JV’s won the Conference Championship 16 of 20 years that Coach Pursley and staff worked with them….Numbers show that the NEG JV’s lost right at just 10 games, in that 20-year span….(1993-2012)
Coach Pursley said this was not a spur of the moment decision and it did not reflect on anything that happened this season..Coach Pursley came to the conclusion that it was time to step away from the coaching and teaching in the Sring of 2012…He knew then, that it was time to make a move….
Coach Tommy Pursley will quickly become handyman Tommy Pursley and he will go to work on some of those home improvement tasks that he has been meaning to get to, for several months/years….Time to fix up the outside of his house and smell the morning air from a different vantage point, maybe while up on top of a ladder, with a bucket of paint….
A true class act who put in the time and effort/hard work and the results are evident from the time he spent at Northeast Guilford High School, out on Hicone Road, just off of Highway 29 North….
Never a losing season, never missed the playoffs, averaging 9 wins a season for 20 years, two appearances in the State 3-A Title Game and a long list of players and asssitant coaches, that hepled him put Northeast Guilford on the NCHSAA football map….
Excellent job Coach Pursley and enjoy your time off….Maybe we’ll see you coaching again some day…..
A few players that we remember from Coach Pursley days at NEG and this is just a few and there are many, many more…
Carlos McNeil
Michael Sanders
Michael Via
Matt Deese
Brock Pursley
Nathan Cockman
Jacob McCann
Caleb McCann
Tyronne Hamer
Brandon Apple
NEG assistant baseball Coach Sugg
Evan Reasor….
Sanders may be the best linebacker that I have seen there, Michael Via the top lineman and Matt Deese the top back….Just some thought and Jacob McCann ranks right in there as the RB/LB combo…He was a real good one….Remembered Carlos McNeil last night and he too would have to rank up there with those outstanding NEG Ram RB’s…Maybe Deese as the big back and McNeil as the speed back….Both backs were part of State Championship runs…
Plenty of coaches and a few I remember seeing on a regular basis at NEG include Coach Richard Sisk, Coach Angell(Maybe Gary) and in recent years Coach Via…
****Coach Pursley was also the head coach at Trinity High School before taking over the NEG Rams program…*****