Former Miami High player and Booker T. Washington football coach loses battle to cancer
Earl Tillman, who coached Miami’s Booker T. Washington High School to football state championships in 2015 and in 2019, died of pancreatic cancer on Saturday.
He was 51.
Tillman was a right tackle at Miami High in the 1980s, earning an MVP award as the Stings’ best offensive lineman. After graduating in 1988, he then played at Grambling State University, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering.
From there, he returned to his roots – the Overtown section of Miami – becoming a math teacher and assistant football coach at Booker T. Washington.
Tillman won four state titles as a BTW assistant coach, and he added the 2015 and 2019 trophies as the program’s head coach. The Miami Herald honored Tillman with its Overall Male Sports Coach of the Year award following the 2015 season.
The news of Tillman’s death hit a lot of people hard, including Tim “Ice” Harris, who ran the BTW program when it won state titles in 2007, 2012 and 2013. Harris and Tillman coached together for years.
“This was a tough one,” Harris said of Tillman’s passing. “When I got that call, it had me distraught. We were close.
“After Grambling, he became one of the best math teachers and football coaches in Miami. He was a developer of men.
“It’s hard for me to talk about ...”
Harris was a young assistant coach at Miami High when he first met Tillman, who was an athlete at the school back then.
“He was very physical, and he loved the game,” Harris said. “The way he played – that’s the same way he coached, with passion.
“When he was a player, I could see he was doing all the right things. You could see the process of great parenting by his mom.
“There were so many distractions in his way, but he made sure to get to the next level, and he even played some semi-pro football.”
Paul Lasseur, Florida Memorial University’s tight ends coach, said he met Tillman in 2008, when both of them were assistants under Harris.
Lasseur said Tillman battled cancer for about three years.
“He had a great heart,” Lasseur said. “He was helpful to everybody, very funny.
“His nickname was ‘Buck’, and he was dedicated to his students and his athletes. He could be hard on kids sometimes, but they knew he cared about them. It came from a place of love, not from malice.”
Lasseur said he considered Tillman his brother.
“Blood couldn’t have made us any closer,” he said.
Among others, Tillman was survived by his mother, Cherrie Tillman; and his daughters, Bryana Tillman and Zabhrya Tillman. Bryana is a nurse and a graduate of Texas-Arlington. Zabhrya earned an electrical engineering degree from Florida.
In addition, Tillman was survived by his sister, Stephanie Russell, and by his friend, Gracelyn Thomas, who was Zabhrya’s mother.
“He was very protective and supportive,” Zabhrya said. “He made sure education was an imperative for us.”
THIS AND THAT
▪ The Sunshine State Conference, founded in 1975, had never had a men’s basketball team go undefeated through the regular season … until now.
Nova Southeastern University, ranked No. 1 in the nation in NCAA Division II, won again on Saturday, improving to 25-0 overall and 20-0 in league play.
The Sharks, 15-0 at home, will host the SSC postseason tournament, starting on Tuesday night at 7 with a quarterfinal game against Florida Tech. The semifinals are Thursday and the league title game is on Sunday.
▪ The NSU baseball team, ranked seventh in the nation, is 12-0 overall and 3-0 in the SSC.
▪ Barry’s women’s tennis team (7-0) is ranked No. 1 nationally in NCAA Division II.
▪ St. Thomas University’s baseball team (7-1) is ranked 17th nationally in the NAIA.