By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
The head coach of the 1983-84 Castor High School boys basketball and baseball teams had no idea how much his life was about to change when Bill Steadman, a local sporting goods salesman, came by school one day during a PE class.
It had been rough just to get his career started – he had to go to Bienville Parish to even get a job – and Steadman picked up on that.
“If you ever want a job in Bossier Parish,” Steadman told him, “give me a call.”
Steadman, who died in 2003, was probably as well connected in Bossier Parish athletics as anyone before or since, so the young coach filed the conversation away.
After that first year, the coach and his wife weren’t all that fond of the country life, so they moved back to Shreveport – without a job.
So he took Steadman up on his offer, even though he was fairly convinced that the salesman wouldn’t even have a clue who he was.
“Remember me?” he said. “I’m the guy you talked to in Castor a few months ago.”
Two weeks later, the phone rang at the coach’s house from a Bossier Parish school official. There was a job available at Princeton Middle School in Haughton. But there was one condition.
“Can you coach football?”
“Heck yeah, I can,” the coach said.
Of course, he hadn’t coached football. Nor had he played it in college. “And I didn’t know one person in Haughton,” he says now.
Maybe it would all work out. After all, life has a way of leading you down the path you are supposed to be on, no matter what the entrance ramp is.
Four decades ago, he wasn’t even sure coaching was in his future. And now, he’s about to realize something many coaches only dream about.
When his Calvary Cavaliers take on St. Charles Saturday afternoon, Rodney Guin is going to coach in the Superdome in a state championship game for the first time.
The path to get there has been an interesting one, to say the least.
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In his opening game as a head coach at Haughton High, Guin was all set to pick up his first win. But a game-winning chip shot field goal was blocked.
In his second game, his quarterback threw three interceptions in the second half – to the same defender – and the Bucs lost that game by three points.
To begin his third game, Guin watched his team give up an 85-yard interception return, but the Bucs rallied to score 39 straight and he had his first victory.
But the wins didn’t come easily. In his first two years, the Bucs were a combined 11-11 and didn’t win a playoff game. “It was stressful,” Guin says of those first two years. “because Haughton had always won.”
He might have wondered if he was going to survive it all, but the next year Haughton won the district championship and finished 10-2 overall. He’s never had a losing season since.
Guin, 63, has become the third winningest coach in Caddo-Bossier history (194) for games won in those two parishes and has more wins than any active coach.
But survival took on a whole new meaning near the end of his 16 years at Haughton.
In 2014, Guin suffered a heart attack while at his home, and doctors called it a “miracle” that he survived.
He was on the sideline four months later when Haughton opened that season with a win over Woodlawn and went on to have a 9-3 record.
Guin didn’t like talking about his heart then and almost a decade later, he’s still not wild about talking about it.
“People ask me all the time about my heart and I just tell them ‘It’s beating,’ “ he says. “That’s kind of how we roll with that.”
But he does admit that it has had an effect.
“My outlook is different now,” Guin adds. “It’s not win at all costs. Football? I love it, but it’s not the most important thing. My perspective has changed; we enjoy things so much more now as far as doing things with the family. Chasing the small things? Ain’t worth the stress.”
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Jason Brotherton is about as Haughton as they come. His father was a coach at Haughton, he played at Haughton, he was an assistant at Haughton for 16 years and when Guin left after the 2015 season, Brotherton became the head coach at Haughton.
Rodney Guin has been a big part of that Buc-filled journey for Brotherton.
“He hires people to do a job and he trusts them to do it,” Brotherton says. “As long as you get your job done, he’s going to let you do things that he might not even agree with. But he will let you do them, as long as you are working hard.”
If you ask Guin why he still enjoys coaching after all of these years, the first thing he says is “camaraderie with the coaching staff. That’s the most fun part of my day.”
If you didn’t know which one he was, you probably wouldn’t be able to pick out Guin on the Calvary sideline. Or, a few years ago, on the Haughton sideline.
What you do notice is how many of the assistants are actively involved in coaching during a game.
One of the many legacies of Guin is this: When he first became head coach in 2000, most of his hires were young assistants. More than two decades later, many of them are still coaching.
“He does a great job of hiring good coaches, making them feel important and letting them coach,” Brotherton says. “That can be a lost art these days. Back then, we were one of the first teams around here to go to the spread. He let us fail a little bit, and also let us learn and grow, and that’s a big reason why we are still coaching. He made it enjoyable.”
That’s the X’s and O’s part of it, which everybody sees on Friday nights. But Brotherton says that is only part of the story.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned from Rodney is that you can be a nice guy and still be successful,” he says. “That’s always stuck with me. He treats everybody the same. It could be the custodian who cleans the toilets or it could be Nick Saban on a college visit. Rodney treats everybody with the same respect. He treats people the way they should be treated.
“He’s a really good coach, too,” Brotherton adds. “But a lot of people are good coaches. To me, it’s those things that set him apart from other coaches.”
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If you think Guin is a little hesitant about discussing his past health issues, try asking him about what his future holds.
“At the end of every year, we sit down as a family and talk,” he says. “I want to make sure I’m still productive. If I’m not bringing something to the table here, it’s time to get out. We’ll talk about. I don’t know … we will visit that when the year is over, and see where we go from there.”
Guin retired from Haughton after the 2015 season and came to Calvary as an assistant in 2016. He had no intention of becoming a head coach again, but after a year, that’s exactly what he became.
“I just felt like at Haughton they needed a change,” he said. “I just wanted to stay involved and coach and not have to do all the other things that were required (of a head coach). There were some long family discussions about whether to get back in it. The opportunity to win here was pretty good. I’m not going to say that didn’t factor into it.”
He has led the Cavaliers to seven district championships in seven years – he’s never lost a district game – and won the state championship in 2020. But that was the COVID year, and the state championship was played in Natchitoches.
That was nice, but it wasn’t the Superdome. Rodney Guin has never had that chance. Until now.
“Winning a state championship is a major accomplishment,” Guin says. “And to do it with this team and what they have done would be special.”
On Saturday, he will walk onto the Superdome field with uncertain emotions.
“I know we won it (in Natchitoches) and that was great, but this has a special feel to it,” he says. “I don’t care what people say. It’s going to be a big deal for everybody. And especially for me, to be able to say we finally made it.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com