This is from a couple weeks back, but is something I wanted to pass on here in case some of y'all missed it. Georgia's own Charlie Winslette
was inducted into the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Former Dawgs coach Ray Goff gave his induction speech.
“I knew Ray the whole time he was at Georgia, and he’s been a good friend of mine,” Winslette said. “Our friendship didn’t get off to a great start, because he was (coaching) at South Carolina, recruiting one of my linebackers named Will Forts, who ended up going to Georgia. But he couldn’t say a whole lot, because he played at Georgia and ended up coming back to Georgia.”
Goff recounted that story and several others, with a lot of humor mixed in amongst his strong sentiments about what Winslette has meant to the sport of football in the state of Georgia over the past four decades.
“Charlie has been around a long, long time,” Goff said. “If you watched him play, offensively, he was a lot like my old coach, Coach (Vince) Dooley. It wasn’t very exciting. You weren’t going to see a whole lot of passes thrown… He was gonna play defense. It might be 3-0 or 6-0, but he was going to win most of the time.”
Winslette compiled a career record of 260-134-3 over 34 years as a head coach at eight different Georgia high schools. He guided West Rome High in 1985 and Greene-Taliaferro Comprehensive High in 1993 to state championships and two other teams to state title games.
Winslette also is one of only five people to have won a state championship both as a player and a coach. And he's the only coach to have won so many games while leading two different teams (West Rome and Greene-Taliaferro) to state titles, and four teams to state semi-finals. He's one of the state's pre-eminent experts on the game of football but was also feared as a baseball player as well. He even played first base for the Diamond Dawgs way back in the day before graduating from UGA in 1974. Here he is pictured at the event with his family.
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| Winslette (center), newest GACA inductee (picture credit: Steve Froehle) |
Congratulations Coach Winslette! And thanks for all you've done for the players and other coaches in the state of Georgia.
