Longtime coach Holder remembered

• By ROBIN FAMBROUGH
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Oct 28, 2009 - Page: 2C

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Colleagues and former students are mourning the death of Robert D. Holder, a teacher-coach in East Baton Rouge Parish for 42 years.

Holder died last week. Visitation is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, 9700 Scenic Hwy., where Holder served as associate pastor. Services are set for 11 a.m. Thursday at the church.

A group of former students has started a petition to rename Baton Rouge High’s gymnasium for Holder.

“He was a great mentor not only to his players, but also to the other coaches,” longtime colleague Clarence Antoine recalled. “I go all the way back to 1967 at Northwestern High with him. One of things he stressed was that all his coaches should have a master’s degree and by 1969 we all did.”

A former Southern University football player and a member of the school’s athletic Hall of Fame, Holder coached at Zachary’s Northwestern High from 1956-1970. Antoine said Holder’s final three seasons as head football coach-athletic director at Northwestern were his most successful. Northwestern finished 33-3 during that span.

When EBR’s all-black schools merged with the East Baton Rouge Parish School System in 1970, Northwestern was turned into a middle school. Holder then became an assistant coach at Baton Rouge High.

Holder was named the Bulldogs head football coach in 1973 and remained at the school after it became a magnet school and dropped football. He served as BRHS’ athletic director from 1973-98 and was the Bulldogs’ wrestling coach for a number of years. His last team placed fourth in Division I.

“I wrestled for him, and I spent my first 11 years in coaching as his assistant,” East Ascension wrestling coach Pat Mahoney said. “There wasn’t a week that went by when I didn’t call him or we didn’t talk.

“He was a great man. What I’ll always remember was his faith and his love for everybody else.”

For information on the petition to rename the BRHS gym for Holder, go to www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Robert-holder-memorial-gymnasium.

Cross country polls

Catholic High and St. Joseph’s Academy continue to be ranked No. 1 in the latest statewide high school cross country polls, but SJA is now tied for the top spot in the composite girls polls released by the Louisiana High School Track & Field Coaches Association.

The Redstickers and St. Scholastica of Covington both received 93 points. SSA got six first-place votes, compared to four for St. Joseph’s.