Wakefield High football coach J.D. Dinwiddie has joined the ranks of area high school football coaches who are switching jobs or leaving coaching altogether.
Dinwiddie, whose last two teams at Wakefield were 20-5, is swapping one high school head football coaching job for another. He plans to coach in a smaller community in western North Carolina next year. Dinwiddie declined to name his new position because it has not been announced yet.
But Dinwiddie, 35, is among nine area football coaches who are leaving their posts. Most are leaving coaching.
"There's no question that we're losing good people," said Del Phillips, the athletics director at Apex, which is replacing coach Bob Wolfe. "The job is tougher, there is not much money in it and coaches aren't appreciated as much as they should be."
David Riggs, who resigned as football coach at Holly Springs in December, said there are plenty of reasons for high school football coaches to resign.
"I can only speak for myself, but I got old," Riggs said. "I physically can't do it any more."
Riggs said that in 1970 when he was coaching at Broughton in his first job, he told his wife Marie there was no way he could coach football when he was 60.
"I was 24 years old and I already knew that coaching was physically demanding," he said.
"But 40 years later, here I was still coaching at 65. I just couldn't demonstrate and teach the way I wanted to."
Reasons vary
Joining Riggs in the retiring group are Athens Drive's Jeff Smouse, Durham Jordan's Mike Briggs and Apex's Wolfe, although Smouse said he may continue coaching somewhere else.
Enloe's Ron Clark was not retained and Smithfield-Selma's Frank Lassitter stepped down from his first head coaching job after having one win in two seasons.
Daniel Finn resigned his football job at Southeast Raleigh, but retained his athletics director's position. Wayne Bragg is leaving Panther Creek to be the athletics director at Green Hope.
Finn said initially, he thought he could continue as head football coach and athletics director, but learned the two jobs were too demanding.
The salary supplement is bigger for athletics director than for a head coach.
'A family change'
When Dinwiddie was named as coach in 2008, he was the school's sixth head football coach in six years. He succeeded Steve Rivers as the Wolverines' coach in 2004, but was replaced in 2005 by Rivers. Lee Atkins coached the team in 2006 and Chip Williams in 2007.
He came to the school in 2001 and was either an assistant coach or head coach every season since.
"I am a very loyal person," Dinwiddie said. "But my first loyalty is to my family. This is a family change."
Dinwiddie said his decision to leave Wakefield after 11 years on the coaching staff there was difficult, but he is happy with the move.
"I'm from a small town (Proctorville) in Ohio and my wife is from a small town in West Virginia and we want to raise our family in a smaller town," Dinwiddie said.
"I love Wakefield and I love Raleigh, but my oldest child starts kindergarten next year and we want to sink our roots in a smaller community."
Dinwiddie is leaving a team that could be among the area's best. Junior quarterback Connor Mitch passed for more than 3,800 yards last season and is among the top quarterback prospects in the country.
"I love him and his family just like I love all my players," Dinwiddie said. "It was a tough decision, but I decided that my family needs to come first. This is the right time for us to make a move."
Dexter Cooley, the athletics director at Wakefield, said Dinwiddie told him the news Tuesday morning.
"When we talked he talked about family and that comes before athletics always," Cooley said.
Cooley said he expects to receive plenty of interest about the position.
"I'm hoping that we are going to attract some really good candidates," he said. "We want someone who's going to continue to lead our kids to the next level, whether that's to further their careers to college or to just graduate here."
Holly Springs named former Leesville Road assistant Will Orbin as its new football coach this week.
