Randy Smith
Baylor baseball coach Gene Etter recently coached his last game. After 41 seasons as the Red Raiders head coach, Etter announced in March, this season would be his last. More than 850 wins and a pair of TSSAA State Championships only helped to define Coach Gene Etter. He has certainly been much more than that to his players and students. He has been a member of the Baylor school faculty since 1968, and took over as head baseball coach in 1975; the first year that I started covering sports in the Chattanooga area.
At that particular time I was more aware of his father's career as a head football coach. Coach E.B. (Red) Etter won over 300 football games at Baylor and before that at Chattanooga Central. He was the most legendary football coach in Tennessee and perhaps the south.
Other than spending nine years as a minor league baseball player in the Chicago Cubs' organization, the only thing that Gene Etter was famous for in 1975 was that he was the single-wing tailback for Tennessee when the Volunteers lost to the Chattanooga Mocs in 1958. Fifty-seven years later and very few people remember the Mocs' win over U.T. They do however, know a lot about Gene Etter the legendary prep baseball coach.
Gene Etter is a member of the Baylor School Hall of Fame, the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame, and the Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association of America Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was named the TSSAA Baseball Coach of The Year in all classifications. I'm sure inductions into other halls of fame and other awards are on the horizon in the near future as well. When he was asked what he wanted to be remembered for at Baylor, Etter replied, " As a fair, innovative student of the game, and I was able to make my players laugh with my silliness."
Etter's jokes at random times is something his players can look back fondly on. They can also look back fondly at the way they practically all improved as players. More than one hundred of his players went on to play college baseball, with several more going on to play professional baseball.
At Etter's side is his wife Eddie, who decided if she was going to marry this guy, it would have to be at home plate of one his games in the Cubs' organization, which she did. This summer, Eddie and Gene will celebrate 49 years of marriage. Ever since coming to Chattanooga in 1975, I really can't remember ever seeing one without the other. Eddie, who has spent the past twenty-five years in the athletic offices at Baylor, is the one person I could always count on to get me whatever I needed to cover the Red Raiders; whether it be press credentials, stats, or interviews with coaches. She always took care of me.
So, for Eddie and Gene retirement is another big adventure. They will enjoy things together just as they have for the last 49 years, but don't expect to see them sitting in rocking chairs. When Etter addressed his team in March after the decision to retire had been made, he said, "I don't see this as something that is sad. I also don't see it as an end. I see it as a beginning of a new season."
I hope you enjoy this new season Coach; this retirement thing. Whatever you do, know that you earned it.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.