On a cold New Mexico night in the early 1970s, Pat Henry sat down with his future wife for a nice cup of hot chocolate. She casually asked him what he would like to do when he finished school. He replied as if he had prepared for the question his entire life, “Ever since I was seven-years-old, I’ve wanted to be the head track and field coach at a major university.”
In 1987, LSU Athletics Director Joe Dean introduced Henry to his dream, beginning a story in LSU athletics with no parallel.
During Henry’s 15-and-a-half years at the helm of the LSU track and field program, the Tigers have accumulated 24 national championships. As a University, LSU accounts for 38. Henry brought 60 percent of those to Baton Rouge.
Ask him how it feels to be the second-winningest coach in NCAA history, and he will simply say that is not his goal.
“The championships are a byproduct of the system,” Henry said. “You always have to have a plan in life. You always have to have a goal in mind. My goal is to get each individual to be the best person and athlete they can be. That’s what we strive for. If I’m successful with that, the championships will come.”
Henry, 51, grew up in a family of coaches. After The New York Times named his grandfather, Gwinn Henry, the fastest man in the world in 1911, he became the head football coach at Kansas University. After a coaching stint at the University of Missouri, Gwinn Henry settled at the University of New Mexico where he finished his coaching days. Henry’s father Gwinn Bub coached football at UNM as he attended school in Albuquerque, N.M.
“I think like any family, if everybody is a lawyer, a child will have aspirations to become a lawyer, and the same with doctors,” he said. “We just happened to be a coaching family.”
His coaching presence is felt while walking around the painted oval of LSU’s Bernie Moore Track and Field Stadium. A large billboard facing the track gleams out across the field and names each of Henry’s 24 national championship teams. The sign may intimidate opposing teams during meets, much like Henry occasionally intimidates his athletes.
“At first he is very intimidating,” said LSU mile runner Matt Carrol. “I mean, he’s the second-winningest coach in college sports history. When anyone who knows anything about track and field sees him, they say, ‘Whoa, it’s Pat Henry.'”
LSU’s record holder in the weight throw, Mallory McDonald, said she is not intimidated by anything and loves to talk with and about her coach.
“He tries to be serious, but it doesn’t work,” McDonald said. “There is always a select few that can get a rise out of him, but some people don’t know him that well, and when he comes into a room, everybody stops what they are doing and acts like they are being good.”
McDonald loves to “get a rise” out of Henry. Following their national championship at the 2002 Indoor Nationals, McDonald rolled Henry’s house with toilet paper by herself because “everyone else was too scared,” she said.
“Nobody would do it with me,” she said. “So I did it by myself. He said he didn’t like it, but his wife said, ‘He liked it. And don’t let him tell you he didn’t.'”
And if anyone knows him, it is his wife Gail.
Gail Henry is a coach’s wife. She is extremely supportive in everything he does, and she is involved with LSU track and field. She travels to nearly every meet with the team, giving support and holding his hand wherever they go.
Gail is outgoing and claims to be more intimidating than her husband. She said they are opposites.
“He is reserved, and I am in your face,” she said.
They agree they complement each other well. They have ever since their first meeting.
“We met in men’s underwear,” Henry said. “Or at least that’s the family joke.”
While attending college at UNM, Henry worked in the sporting goods section of JC Penny’s while Gail worked in the men’s underwear department.
“I went to the sporting goods section to buy my brother some golf balls,” Gail Henry said. “I saw him there and did my best to flirt with him, and he had to come through men’s underwear on his way home everyday, and he would stop and talk with me.”
They dated for a while but came to a fork in the road when Henry graduated and was offered a coaching position at Hobbs High School, nearly 300 miles away from Albuquerque.
“He walks with all his ducks in a line,” Gail said. “He knows exactly how he wants everything to be. But I knew he was going away, so I asked him to marry me. And he said no. I was so upset. I was just like, ‘Oh my God!'”
That was not part of Henry’s dry sense of humor. It was not a cruel joke attempting to get a rise out his girlfriend. He meant what he said, but on her birthday later in the year, Henry finally proposed.
“His whole life, he has taken everything so seriously,” she said. “And he didn’t want the responsibilities of being a coach, teacher and a husband to all come at once. It ended up being the best thing for us. He made the wiser decision.”
When asked about the national championship ring on his finger, Henry replied, “Well, the ring on my left hand is the most important one of all.”
Although he said his marriage means more to him than his profession, he does have a special place in his heart for his championships.
He wears his most recent championship ring. He said it is a symbol of the athletes he coaches at the present time and helped contribute to the title. The same athletes in which he dedicates his hard work to. The same athletes he recruited to be a part of LSU’s track and field program because he believed they had character.
He not only chooses who he wants to be a part of the program; he knows exactly how he wants his program to run, according to assistant coach Greg Shaver.
“He has a master plan for the program,” Shaver said. “And he has the ability to convey that plan in a concise, strong manner. He is a man with persuasive leadership skills.”
He runs his program much like a CEO runs a major company. He delegates responsibilities to his assistant coaches and trusts them to do their part, and he watches and observes.
“One thing I really admire about him is the way he listens,” Shaver said. “He is excellent at taking in all the data that assistant coaches tell him, and he does whatever he can do to make it better. He is the type of head coach assistants love to work for and with. He treats everybody with respect. You don’t see that too often in the college ranks.”
Shaver said nobody works harder than Henry. His family even nicknamed him “The Waterboy” because of his work ethic. Gail Henry said if anyone passes their house in the summer time, her husband will be riding his lawn mower, just like Bobby Boucher.
“He works his head off,” Gail Henry said. “And working in the yard is his release. He gets away from the track. He gets away from the athletes and gets lost in the yard.”
He gets away from the 110 athletes under his watch. He gets his release from the 24 NCAA Championships. He gets his release from a community that does not fully respect the job he does.
Sportswriter Sam King of The Advocate wrote a New Year’s resolutions and predictions column January 5, outlining LSU athletics. He predicted football coach Nick Saban will be offered two NFL coaching jobs. He also predicted the Tigers football team will finish No. 3 in the nation. The Lady Tigers basketball team will reach the Final Four, and so on and so forth. But what he wrote for his fifth prediction upset some people associated with LSU track and field.
“All Pat Henry will do (yawn, yawn) is steer his track and field forces to two and maybe three national championships,” wrote King.
King is not alone in his sentiments, and the consensus is that many people in the Baton Rouge area are desensitized to the winning tradition Henry has implemented at LSU.
“He is going to do it again,” Gail Henry said. “He is going to win more national championships. And people will say, ‘Big deal.’ He’s won it so many times people don’t think it’s very hard. I know I’m spoiled by having a husband with that type of personality and that type of talent. If he were a football coach, he would be the most famous man in the country.”
Shaver thinks people do not give the recognition he deserves because he has been so successful, people do not think it could be difficult.
“We are in a great situation here where we have the ability to recruit, and we have first class facilities,” Shaver said. “But there are many other schools in the country that have everything they need too. But why don’t they win like he does?”
The notoriety that usually comes with winning national championships is not attractive to Henry, and people around him said he wants no part of it. When reporters decide to cover an event or interview him and the players, he kindly thanks them for getting to know the athletes.
“He would coach for free if we didn’t have to pay for food or bills,” Gail Henry said. “I probably shouldn’t say that, but that’s how much he loves it. That’s how much he loves the kids.”
He coaches both the men’s and women’s teams. In each meet, there are 22 events. In track and field, each individual is isolated. They stand alone. They cannot hide in the lane or take a play off. Each time their number is called, all eyes are focused on them.
“In order to get that many athletes to perform their best and enjoy doing it, it takes somebody special,” Gail Henry said. “It’s just something to say that you are the very, very best in the nation at what you do. He has a God-given gift at something he loves to do. Not many people can say that.”
The success he has baffles even him at times. He said he expected to have success at LSU, but he never expected to own 24 national titles in the midst of his 16th year.
“I don’t know what it is,” Gail said. “Some people have it, I guess.”
Shaver said it comes as no surprise that Henry has become a track and field icon.
“Coach Henry is the type of person that it wouldn’t matter if he were a track coach, a businessman, a doctor or a lawyer, he would be successful no matter what,” Shaver said. “I’ve never seen anyone work harder and with a clearer mind than him.
“He is able to get the best out of all his athletes, and the championships are a direct result of that. We don’t always get the best athletes, but it doesn’t take long under Pat until they become the best in the country.”
If the success plays a large part in his life, he does not show it. If the championships overwhelm his psyche, he does not parade it. He simply says he is a coach. He enjoys teaching. He enjoys educating. He said that is all he has tried to do at LSU.
“Sports are just a short period of your life,” Henry said as he glanced at the national championship billboard overlooking the track. “I not only try and teach them about track and field, I also try to help prepare them for the rest of their lives. That’s why I coach.”
Heading into the 2003 SEC Outdoor Championships, the LSU men’s and women’s track teams have qualified in 62 events for regionals — 27 on the 10th-ranked men’s side and 35 on the No. 1-ranked women’s side.
Henry will be there, standing by the track in his signature straw hat, teaching, coaching and watching as his teams make a run at yet another national championship.