Every November, I think of Coach Watters.
His name is Charles Watters, but since I never grow up I always refer to him just as I’ve known him for 36 years.
He worked various roles at Orange High School for decades. Officially, he was a Western Civilization teacher, varsity women’s basketball coach and the public address announcer for men’s basketball games.
Unofficially, he made it cool to be a Panther.
If you have to ask why, then you’ve never heard him speak.
Recently, I finished a phone conversation with Coach Watters and it truly dawned on me how much he missed his calling in life. Even for a man with immense knowledge that opened the door for my sheltered mind at 15 years old into a path of how much education can lead to new avenues in life.
He should have been a Voiceover artist. If the Internet had existed in the 1980s, it may have led him to something else entirely.
Keith David? Henry Rollins? John Cena?
Great Voiceover men. But they aren’t Coach Watters.
When I first got to know Coach Watters, it was during a very difficult time in my life. I was young, looking for direction, and the winter of 1989 was a period of tremendous personal conflict. After a stint at Durham Regional Hospital, I started working as a manager for the junior varsity basketball team. Following the JV games, I would listen to Coach Watters announce “The Mighty Panthers” and Orange High Gymnasium transformed into a new place.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear it was the voice of God. The deep baritone that sang at his church for hours every Sunday took every Panther students though his various colourful catchphrases like “In Your Face Disgrace,” “Chris Whitaker says yes!” and, of course “Fire it Up!” which became the Orange rallying cry whenever he presided over a pep rally.
Oh, yes. There was also “Ice,” which he said after many converted free throws.
If you’ve ever heard one of my basketball broadcasts on the website, it’s something I say after every converted 3-pointer by Orange. I actually started doing it when I did Appalachian State basketball play-by-play at WASU in the late 1990s. When I was in my early-20s I figured who was ever going to know about it?
It’s not like I was going to wind up back at Orange High, right?
Right?
It’s example #14,986 of the white man ripping off the Black man.
What was missing from the games with Coach Watters?
Well, I suppose good teams would be the answer. Orange wasn’t exactly at the peak of its athletic powers back then. Winning six conference championships, like the Panthers did last year, was a long way off back in 1987-1991.
But did it really matter?
No.
Because Coach Watters was at Orange High.
Yes, Hillside had Rodney Rogers, who would go on to play in the NBA after a storied career at Wake Forest. Yes, Northern Durham has Dwayne Washington on the football field. He would go on to play for the Denver Broncos. And Chapel Hill had Henrik Rodl, who would go on to win a national championship at UNC in 1993.
But Orange had Coach Watters. And that made Orange High cooler than every place else.
Some visiting fans bristled whenever they visited Orange because if there was one thing Coach Watters hated, it was a quiet house. I sat beside him a few times and he loathed whenever the home fans sat on their hands for a game.
A lot of those visiting fans would come up to Coach Watters afterwards and ask them to announce their games. Even some from Chapel Hill High, the home of two state championship teams in the 1980s.
That’s how cool he made Orange.
Coach Watters always had reason to quit in life. After journeying to Durham from Jackson State University as a Sears washing machine salesman, he started work as a teacher. He suffered several automobile accidents in the 1980s that left him with a severe limp. At one point, he was told he would never walk again by doctors. He proved them wrong. He not only walked, taught and served in Orange’s front office, but he coached future college players Constance Poteat (N.C. State) and Christie Graves (Virginia State).
I have personally known one public address announcer from another sport at Orange who refuses to do basketball because he knows he’ll be compared to Coach Watters. And anyone who has heard him knows there’s no one that can follow him.
What’s the point of doing a guitar solo after Jimi Hendrix left the stage?
The North Carolina High School Athletic Association is a wonderful organization that honors coaches, players and personalities that shape this level of sport from Murphy to Mateo. At many schools, the NCHSAA has honored people who were instrumental to their school, their community and their town.
Coach Watters was the ultimate example in each case in Hillsborough. There’s no one like him and there will never be another.
Coach Watters is bedridden now. Years of operations on his legs have taken their toll but he still loves sports. He taught at a time when women’s professional basketball leagues were fly-by-night operations. After years as a women’s coach, he watches the WNBA religiously, marvelling at how similar Angel Reese looks like former Orange player Tere Williams, who went on to play at Virginia Tech.
He was there for me in 1989. I was one of countless people he has helped, entertained, taught and consoled.
Now, it’s time for the people he helped to be there for him.
This is Coach Watters’ Go Fund Me page.
Please donate what you can.
Really, it isn’t a donation. I think of it as paying an overdue debt to someone whose influence on my life and worldview is immeasurable.
And besides, I stole my 3-point call from him.
