Shaw Jr. returns to coach in the stadium named for his father

It would be hard to imagine a more fitting place for Doug Shaw Jr. to be coaching than the venue for Saturday’s Touchstone Energy Bowl North vs. South All-Star Football Game.

The Palmetto High head coach will be an assistant on the North sideline at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium, which is named after his father, the legendary Myrtle Beach coach who died of a heart attack in 1994.

Shaw Sr. won four Class AAA state championships at Myrtle Beach over five years in the early 1980s and is still in the top 25 in coaching wins in the state, according to the South Carolina High School League, with a 223-77-2 record in 25 seasons.

“It is kind of different when you look up there and see your own name up there. It is kind of cool,” Shaw admitted. “When I start looking at it and know what all he did for not just this game but for the game of football in South Carolina is special too.”

Coaching in the North-South game itself is also a special occasion for Shaw, who has been to perhaps every North-South game over the past three decades.

Shaw Sr. lobbied to bring the all-star game to Myrtle Beach in 1986 from Clinton, where it was played for three years the Friday night before the Shrine Bowl, which features the best seniors in both of the Carolinas.

The game was played at Coastal Carolina for a couple years before moving to Doug Shaw stadium.

“I’ve been around this game for a long time, growing up here and coaching here and now actually getting to coach in the game, this has been a wonderful, enjoyable week,” said Shaw, who has been the North’s receivers coach this week. “To be able to coach in it is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’m glad to be here and to be in this stadium is just a great feeling. … It’ll be fun. We’ll have family here. This game means a lot to our family.”

Shaw Jr., 44, was an assistant football coach at Myrtle Beach for five years and North Myrtle Beach for three years before spending the past 13 years as a head coach at three different schools in the Upstate.

He speaks wistfully of maybe some day being the head football coach at Myrtle Beach High. He still regularly checks the scores of Myrtle Beach football games on Friday nights or Saturday mornings.

But his decision to move from the Grand Strand was complicated on many levels, and a lot would go into a decision if he ever had the opportunity to take over the Myrtle Beach football program.

“When I left and went to the Upstate I didn’t want to be in the shadow, so to speak, and for people to go, ‘He got this job because of this,’ or because of the success he had if I were not to have it. There’s all kinds of things like that,” Shaw said. “I’ve talked to my wife [Stacy] about it. It’s my alma mater, too. I went to school here, grew up here and will always be a Seahawk. If we were to ever come back it would be a family decision, obviously.

“But every once in a while I get down here and go, ‘Man, this would be cool. This would be neat.’ 

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Growing up a Seahawk

Shaw was not only around the Myrtle Beach football program growing up, he was practically in it.

“I was here all the time,” Shaw said. “All those kids in the ’70s and ’80s, when I was the little kid, I had so many big brothers it was ridiculous, and dad trusted them. I could get in the car with them as an 8-year-old and go, ‘Hey, I’m going to ride with so and so and he’s going to take me to get something to drink.’ That was just great. It was just a very family-oriented bunch of people and group.”

Being in the stadium for practices this week elicited vivid memories from his time as a player and assistant coach.

“That press box, I’m sure it’s changed inside, but it looks exactly like it did when I played here. The bleachers were gray and not green and gold, and mom used to sit right there,” Shaw said, pointing to a spot low in the bleachers behind the home sideline where Cecelia Shaw laid claim. “There are so many memories here in this stadium.”

You might think Shaw’s career choice was predetermined, but he actually enrolled at Newberry College unsure of his major and future career path.

“You go in as a freshman and you go, ‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ ” Shaw recalled. “It didn’t take very long for me to figure it out, though, that I wanted to be a teacher and a coach.”

He played for his father and was looking forward to coaching with him, but he missed that opportunity by a few months.

His father died in November 1994 and Shaw Jr. graduated from Newberry, where he played baseball, that December. His sister, Gina, was a senior in high school.

Shaw returned home with his future wife, a Spartanburg native whom he met at Newberry and is also a teacher, and accepted a job as a physical education teacher at Myrtle Beach Elementary.

He was an assistant football coach under Marty Williams for three years and Doug Terry for two, and the Seahawks baseball coach for four years.

He then spent three years as the high school strength coach and a football assistant at North Myrtle Beach High under coach Steve Hart. “I love baseball, but my goals were to be a head football coach,” Shaw said, “and down here I was teaching elementary school and I don’t know any elementary school teachers that are head football coaches, so I had to get to a high school, I felt like.”

Cecelia still lives in Myrtle Beach and has retired from teaching fifth grade at Myrtle Beach Elementary. Gina is a school psychologist at Spring Valley High and her husband, Tim Perry, is a baseball coach and football assistant at Airport.

Shaw said he makes it back to Myrtle Beach a couple times a year on holidays and for the North-South game, and Cecelia travels more regularly to visit her children and grandchildren. Shaw’s son, Luke, is a freshman quarterback on the Palmetto junior varsity team and also plays soccer.

Myrtle Beach has developed a lot in the 16 years since Shaw was part of the Seahawks program. “We miss it at times, but then again it’s not quite the same Myrtle Beach I grew up in,” Shaw said.

Forging a career

Shaw was offered his first head football coaching job in 2003 at Carolina High and Academy in Greenville, which was close to his in-laws. “I just felt like it was a chance to be a head coach,” Shaw said.

He didn’t enter the best of situations, as Carolina had a long losing streak and he extended it 20 games by going winless in his first two seasons. “You start questioning yourself as a coach,” Shaw said. “You go, ‘Why can’t we win.’ Then the third year we were there we finished 6-4 and made the playoffs for the first time in 10, 11 or 12 years. None of the kids I coached had ever won a game.

“The thing is the way dad brought us up we just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and we go from 0-10 to 6-4, and the community got excited again.”

He then spent seven years as the head coach at Mauldin, producing several winning seasons and numerous Shrine Bowl and North-South selections.

He had an opportunity to add athletic director duties to coaching in 2013 at Class AAA Palmetto and has been there three seasons.

“It’s a fantastic place to be,” Shaw said. “In some school districts you can’t be an AD and be a coach. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being the AD. That’s how I grew up. That’s what I knew. I didn’t just go to football games. I went to basketball games and baseball games and softball games. I just love athletics.”

Palmetto went 3-7 in his first season and improved to 4-6 in 2014 and 5-5 this season. Prosperity may be on the way as Palmetto’s JV team went 7-3, the middle school team lost just one game and the age 12-13 rec team won the state championship. “We see the progress coming,” Shaw said. “It’s just trying to convince the kids to keep working hard and things are going to get better.”

With Shaw’s growing tenure came the invitation to coach in the North-South game. He has been a board member and is a past president of the S.C. Football Coaches Association, which selects the game’s coaches each year. “Knowing how important it was to [my father] has made it that important to me,” Shaw said.

The selected coaches choose the participating players. Palmetto offensive lineman Blake Owens is on the North team. “I never knew how hard it was to pick kids,” Shaw said. “You have kids on your team and you go, ‘Man, I wish he would have made it. I thought he was pretty good.’ But after going through the process, I’ll never say anything ever again. It really is hard.”

Shaw ran into a couple former Myrtle Beach High classmates earlier this week around town, including one at his hotel, and they shared some memories.

“I’ve always enjoyed it down here,” Shaw said. “As commercialized as it is you’ve still got your local people. Like up where even mom lives, those people are still the same people living there. So in some sense it’s still a small town the way I think of it.”

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 10:15 PM with the headline "Shaw Jr. returns to coach in the stadium named for his father."