Ex-Peninsula coach lauded for success, innovation
When referring to coach Charlie Nuttycombe as “a man ahead of his time,” former Newport News High quarterback Horace Underwood cited the rarely seen no-huddle offense he installed for the 1959 Typhoon team that went 9-1.
The Typhoon scored three touchdowns in six minutes, Underwood recalled, before Warwick realized they weren’t going to huddle. Gene Duncan, a star running back on that team, says Nuttycombe turned coaching “into a science” concerning things like technique and energy distribution.
Those concepts merged in the fall of 1963, when Nuttycombe told Fred Anspach, then the only high school quarter-miler in state history to have run under 49 seconds, that he could not play football. Sidelining his star back was painful, but, decades before science confirmed the dangers of CTE and concussions, Nuttycombe refused to put Anspach at risk.
“He would have been an All-American back, but we made him quit for his own good,” Nuttycombe, who died Dec. 4 at 90 years old, told the Daily Press in 1989. “It’s tough to tell a guy who’s not hurting, who doesn’t have a headache and who’s
thinking clearly, that he can’t play.”
Not only did Anspach, a threetime state quarter-mile champion on three Newport News state championship track teams coached by Nuttycombe (and Julie Conn), hold no grudge, he praised his former coach in his self-written obituary in 2019.
“The man who was most responsible for me becoming the person I became is my high school football/track coach Charlie Nuttycombe,” Anspach wrote. “He was the first adult to support me and believe in me.
“He never said a negative word to me. I loved him.”
Those words speak more loudly even than the staggering numbers that underscore Nuttycombe’s success in 34 years as a football and track and field coach at Newport News (1956-70) and Menchville (197088) high schools.
As head football coach at the two schools, his teams won 150 games in 29 seasons. Co-coach on legendary track and field staffs at both schools, he was a driving force for 23 indoor and outdoor team state championships – 14 with Newport News and nine with Menchville.
Those numbers, and those who knew him, must speak for Nuttycombe because he rarely talked about himself. When he spoke, it was often to share – be it his knowledge or compassion – with family, students and student-athletes, coaching colleagues and rivals.
Like Anspach, all were the better for it.
“I was kind of a redneck, head-strong kid, and Coach Conn didn’t want anything to do with me, so he sent me to Coach Nuttycombe,” said Duncan, who went on to found PKA Construction. “I ended up running on a state championship mile relay team that season as a freshman.
“He had a way of communicating that made you want to learn and to fight for him. I learned from him how to deal with people when I went into business, that you don’t have to scream and holler to motivate.”
Sheldon Johnson, a football standout and all-state thrower on Menchville state championship teams in the late 1970s and early ’80s, said he, too, benefited from Nuttycombe’s interest in him as more than just an athlete.
“He had a vision for me and pushed me to go to Virginia Military Institute,” said Johnson, who still competes internationally in masters events in the shot put and weight throw. “VMI was a school that offered everything for me because I wanted to play football, basketball, track and be an engineer.
“I retired last year as an engineer. He was influential because he recognized all of my talents, and I appreciate that.”
Nuttycombe told the Daily Press in 1989, “Julie Conn once said you don’t know what kind of a coach you are until 10 or 15 years later, when you see what kind of people your players have become.”
Sheldon Johnson was the beneficiary of Nuttycombe’s collegiality in the track community. Offered the VMI track coaching job in 1974, Nuttycombe – a husband and father of six who preferred high school coaching because of the family time it afforded – recommended Wade Williams.
Williams was a coach at Ferguson, the 1974 AAA outdoor state champion. Despite the intense rivalry between neighbors Ferguson and Menchville, Nuttycombe served as Williams’ mentor.
“If he saw I had an athlete with potential, he’d wait until after the meet and say, ‘Wade, come over so I can show you something,’ ” said Williams, named coach of the year three times in the Southern Conference at VMI and twice in the ACC at Clemson. “Then he’d give me a clinic on what that kid needed to do to improve.
“I think Charlie was just trying to get me out of the Peninsula District when he recommended me for VMI, but I admired the man. He was a not-so-bitter rival.”
Jimmy Johnson, co-coach at Menchville with Nuttycombe and Steve Lewis at Menchville, said mentoring coaches was natural for Nuttycombe because he had an encyclopedic knowledge of every track and field event.
“Not only that, but he had the rapport and personality with young people to teach so that they would respond,” Jimmy Johnson said. “He covered all of the bases because he was an old-school coach who had a positive outlook and saw the best in every situation.
“I don’t think he ever saw an athlete he didn’t think he could make better.”
Many he helped make great, including Newport News’ Anspach, Duncan, Underwood, Doug Dickinson, Bucky Keller, Donny White, Don Carroll, Jimmy Hogan and Willie Armistead. NFL wide receiving great Al Toon, Mike Hagen, David Duff and Rick Patrick are just a few of the Menchville standouts he coached.
Nuttycombe belonged to two of the greatest track coaching staffs in state history. Some would say Nuttycombe and Conn, who already had 10 state championships with Newport News before Nuttycombe helped him more than double that, were the best ever.
Others insist his coaching partnership with Jimmy Johnson and Lewis, which produced All-Americans regularly in the 1970s and ’80s, was as good. Lewis went on to become a head coach in college at Hampton and Pittsburgh. Johnson, whose middle-distance corps was long among the state’s best, is the only Peninsula District coach to win cross country state titles (with Warwick and Menchville).
Nuttycombe was honored near and far. Nationally, he received the inaugural United States National High School Track Coach of t he Year award in 1975, 30 years before he became one of only four high school coaches inducted into the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Married to Betsy for 69 years, he was as beloved at home as in his profession.
“I think he was as good a husband as he was a father, and he was the kind of father everybody deserves,” oldest son Eddie Nuttycombe said. “He was sensitive, he was caring, he was very insightful and he rarely raised his voice.
“We’d all say he was our adviser, our mentor and always our cheerleader.”
Eddie (Virginia Tech ‘ 78) followed in his father’s footsteps, coaching track for 32 years at the University of Wisconsin, where he led the 2007 Badgers to the first NCAA indoor track title ever for a Big Ten school. They are the only father-son duo in the U.S. track and cross country hall of fame.
All of Nuttycombe’s children graduated from college and have enjoyed productive careers: Chuck (Virginia Tech ’78); Stephen (Radford ’80); Pamela (Radford ’81); Graham (VMI ’83) and Jenny (Christopher Newport ’87).
Je n n y Nu t t y c o mbe is currently the athletic director at Warwick High. She says her son, Graham Wilson, is one of 15 grandchildren to benefit from Nuttycombe’s considerable attention after he retired in 1990 from coaching.
Wilson, 27, specialized in tennis, a sport he played for Virginia Wesleyan, but was also one of the Peninsula District’s best cross country runners because of his grandfather’s “private” coaching.
“He was friendly, humble and never spoke about himself or his accomplishments,” Wilson said. “He always advised to let your work ethic speak for itself.”
Because it did, quiet-spoken Charlie Nuttycombe, a man ahead of his time, will remain timeless in Peninsula high school sports lore.