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Yesterday, we posted the stories of four Tar Heels who were at one point in time, the coach of two different North Carolina sports teams. Today, here are four more in part two of our look at coaches who pulled double duty.
Bob Fetzer
If that last name sounds familiar to you, it’s because Fetzer was the namesake of Fetzer Field, the former home of UNC’s soccer and lacrosse teams, which was recently replaced by Anson Dorrance Field. Fetzer got that honor for long and distinguished tenure as athletic direction at Carolina, but it’s not the only job he held in Chapel Hill.
From 1921-25, he and his brother Bill, more on him in a minute, were the co-coaches for the Carolina football team. Over those years, they led the team to a 30-12-4 record, but most notably, they were in charge of the 1922 team. That season, UNC shared the Southern Conference championship, which was the first football conference championship in program history.
Besides that, Fetzer was also the long time coach of the track and field program. Fetzer was quite busy over his years at UNC.
Bill Fetzer
As eluded to, Bob was not the only Fetzer brother who pulled double duty.
Bill was a decently successful co-football coach with his brother, but the former one game only major league baseball player, also coached UNC on the baseball diamond. Like in football, Fetzer had five seasons as Carolina baseball coach, leading them to a .649 winning percentage, including a 19-2 season in 1922.
Prior to coming to UNC, Fetzer actually held the football, baseball, and basketball coaching jobs at Davidson, so both brother had quite the careers.
Bill Lange
Lange was only the head coach for one UNC team, but he was an assistant on another, and is a sneakily important figure in Tar Heel sports history.
Ahead of the 1939-40 season, Lange was hired to be the new coach of the Carolina basketball team. In his first season, he led the team to a 23-3 record and a Southern Conference championship. They next year, he took the school to its first ever NCAA Tournament appearance. Lange put in several good years before leaving to become an athletic director elsewhere. Ben Carnevale and Tom Scott followed him with some decent years before UNC managed to hire a guy named Frank McGuire, and the rest is history.
While doing that, he was also an assistant on the football team, mostly under coach Raymold Wolf.
Charles Doak
Out final coach is a guy with connections all over the triangle.
Yesterday, we mentioned Nathaniel Cartmell, the track star who was a double duty coach, including the first ever men’s basketball coach. After he had to leave due to a charge that he was illegibly playing dice with known gamblers, Doak was hired in his place. Despite his basketball job, and the career winning record he put up at UNC, he was more focused on baseball, which would become the other Carolina sport he led.
After his stint at UCN, Doak would succeed his brother as basketball coach at Trinity, which is of course now known as Duke. Years after finishing that gig, he became baseball coach at NC State. State’s baseball stadium is today named in honor of him. That is delightfully weird career path that no one ever again will probably take.
There are probably others besides the eight profiled over the last two days, but it is fun to look back at how weird college sports used to be.
Sources
https://goheels.com/sports/2012/7/15/206354361.aspx
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/unc.sidearmsports.com/documents/2020/9/3/2020FB_Guideweb.pdf
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/fetzewi01.shtml
“University of North Carolina Basketball” by Adam Powell.