After 46 years coaching high school football, Byron Walker prepares for ‘new chapter’
Byron Walker’s head coaching career began — believe it or not — with a literal flip of a coin. People don’t believe it, Walker said, but he insists the story is true.
As Walker tells it, he was a 22-year-old assistant coach at Glades Day High School in Belle Glade when the school’s coach quit the Friday before the 1976 season began. The principal preferred to find a coach internally, so she looked to two of the team’s assistant coaches as the immediate top candidates.
“She was looking for one of us to step up,” Walker said.
Walker considered himself the underdog for the job since the other assistant was several years older than him. The two were playing in a slow-pitch softball tournament together that weekend when the principal called with her decision.
“I was told I won the head coaching job by a coin flip at 22 years old,” Walker said. “I guess the rest is history.”
More than four-and-a-half decades later, Walker’s time as a football coach — which included 16 years at Glades Day, 19 at Plantation American Heritage and 11 at Archbishop McCarthy — has come to an end.
Archbishop McCarthy announced Walker’s retirement from coaching this week. Walker will remain Archbishop McCarthy’s athletic director. Dino Mangiero, most recently the head coach at Middletown (New Jersey) Mater Dei Prep and the high school head coach of former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, will assume head coaching duties for the Mavericks.
“Father Time,” Walker said when asked what led to his decision to stop coaching. “I’ve been blessed. The time comes. I have other things I want to do — dedicate more time to my athletic director’s position and other things in the school. This kind of opens a new chapter now.”
If the next chapter is half as successful as his previous chapter, it will be a good run.
Walker went 319-179 as a high school football coach at his three stops. He won state titles with Glades Day in 1980, 1982 and 1986 and reached the championship game six other times (1983, 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988 with Glades Day and 1998 with American Heritage).
He was inducted into the Florida Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2003.
Walker went 54-59 in 11 years with Archbishop McCarthy. He led the Mavericks to back-to-back Gold Coast Football Conference Championships in 2015 and 2016 when Archbishop McCarthy went 11-0 and 10-1, respectively.
“On behalf of our Maverick family, I want to thank Coach Walker for his dedication and work ethic as our football head coach,” Archbishop McCarthy principal Richard Jean said in a press release. “Coach Walker is a man of high morals and standards.”
Walker grew up in Belle Glade and won a state football title as a player at Glades Central in 1972.
His time growing up there, and eventually turning Glades Day into a powerhouse, only fueled his desire to keep coaching.
“In the Glades, we had kind of a chip on our shoulder about being out there in Belle Glade and isolated and what have you,” Walker said. “Just seeing those kids succeed and we started achieving on the state level — that was great because there wasn’t a lot of expectation, some small town, not a whole lot of super resources. It gave me a reason to get up and go to work every day.
“As time’s gone along, coaches are so much more important to kids today as mentors and role models and I just think it’s an important position and something that needs good people.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 2:13 PM.
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