By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
There have been some legendary high school baseball coaches in Caddo-Bossier history throughout the years.
For example, Dr. James C. Farrar coached at Fair Park, Northwood and Southfield and was three-time state Coach of the Year before becoming a college coach and then a major league scout.
Tommy Henry won a state-record 66 straight regular season games at Bossier on the way to appearances in the state finals in back-to-back seasons. He won 74 straight district games and five straight district titles.
Jim Wells took Loyola to two appearances in the state finals during the early 1980s before becoming the winningest coach ever at both Northwestern State and the University of Alabama.
Considering that there are six state finals appearances among them, whatever kind of “best ever” list you might draw up for local high school coaches, these three would be on it.
Haughton’s Glenn Maynor has won more games than Farrar, Henry and Wells.
Combined.
Maynor has been the winningest coach in Caddo-Bossier history for a few years now, but he got the landmark No. 600 win Friday as part of a three-game sweep over Evangel.
At age 50, Maynor plans to keep going for a while. “You can never really get to a place where you think you’ve got it all figured out,” he says. “I think I’m a better coach than I was two years ago. I may not have the energy I once did because I’m older. But when you get a big win and you are jumping up and down when it’s over, I tell people all the time that you can’t get that kind of feeling selling insurance.”
It’s a long way from Year 1 to Year 28 and Maynor is quite aware that it took a special set of circumstances for him to get started as Haughton’s head coach.
After an outstanding career at Airline in the late 1980s, Maynor went to Northwestern State. He was a left-handed pitcher for the Demons and played for Wells. After graduating, he did his student teaching at Haughton in 1994. He was hired for the next school year as an assistant for three sports, including baseball, but through a series of promotions in the Bossier Parish School System, Bucs baseball coach Gene Couvillion became an assistant principal in December.
“I was pretty much the only baseball guy at the school,” Maynor said. “Luckily I had been here the year before as a student teacher so all the kids were familiar with me.”
Even luckier was that he inherited a stacked team that won 27 straight games and finished with a 30-3 record.
“I felt like I knew the game,” Maynor says. “I played for Coach Wells at Northwestern and he was a great baseball guy. It wasn’t like I was going into it blind. From the beginning, the coaching was the least thing I was worried about; it was the managing and administrative part of it.”
Win No. 1 came on Feb. 21, 1995, on the road 8-1 against Benton. In 28 years, Maynor has had only one losing season.
“The only way you can keep doing this as long as I have and maintain a level of success is to keep growing,” he says. “You can’t ever be satisfied, because things change. When I first started, we’d run five-hour practices. First of all, couldn’t do that with today’s kids anyway and the other thing is that I’m a lot more efficient in how I run a practice than I was before.”
With the 600th in his rearview mirror, Maynor will continue to try to get the ultimate milestone – a state championship. As a Class 4A school in 1998 and 2000, Haughton reached the state semifinals. In Class 5A, they have made it as far as the quarterfinals.
“We’ve had a lot of success in the playoffs,” he says. “We just haven’t won the big one yet.”
At 13-2 this season, Haughton would certainly be considered as the District 1-5A favorite. The Bucs will open district play Tuesday at Benton, meaning Maynor will be trying to get Win No. 602 at the same place he got Win No. 1 in 1995.
“In today’s times, you wouldn’t see a 23-year-old head coach,” he says. “I was lucky to be in the right spot at the right time.”
