Former Maysville assistant football coach and Paris head coach Homer Goins will be inducted into the Dawahares/KHSAA Hall of Fame Saturday night. The induction dinner will be held at the Lexington Conmvention Center. Here's a column I wrote about Goins for the Mason County Beat in October 2005:
Homer Goins has two connections to high school football in this community. He was an assistant coach at Maysville High School in 1967 and 1968, and as the principal of Paris High School, he hired David Buchanan first as an assistant coach and later as the head coach of the Greyhounds.
Goins, a native of Evarts, Ky., was a running back for the Kentucky Wildcats. When his former teammate, Tom Becherer, was named the first head coach of the Maysville Bulldogs, Goins came here as the assistant coach.
"We were about 22 years old, and we had never coached a day," Goins said laughing.
The two young coaches had to teach the Maysville players about the game of football.
"We would tell kids to play tackle, and they’d say ‘what’s a tackle,’" Goins said. "But we did have three really good offensive lineman ... David Wise and Ronald Rigg and Donnie Wilson. Now they had played for that boys club up there in Maysville, and they were three good lineman. And then we had a couple of kids that transferred from Mason County that played for us."
During the 1968 season, Maysville tied the Paris Greyhounds 6-6. Goins thought the Bulldogs scored what would have been a game winning conversion, but the officials saw if differently.
"[Paris] had more talent than us," he said. "And they jumped out on us six to nothing.
And we completely controlled that game after the first quarter, and we end up tying the game up, and we go for two down there, and it looked like to me the guy got in."
But the officials ruled the conversion run failed, and the Bulldogs had to settle for the tie.
"We had a lot of nice players," Goins said. "Henry Boone was a basketball player, and it was hard back then to get basketball players out at Maysville because their basketball program was so good. But we got Henry Boone out, he played quarterback for us, and he was a big help getting that program started."
He says some other kids came out for the team who had not played "but they improved quickly."
Goins had a good time during his two seasons at Maysville.
"I enjoyed it up there," Goins said. "We had a lot of nice people that supported the program. It was a great experience, and I still have a lot of friends around Mason County."
Goins left Maysville in 1969 to take the head coaching job at Paris. How did he get the Paris program rolling?
"First of all, they had some good talent," he said. "We had some young kids, they had not been very well disciplined, and kids had been missing practice and stuff like that. So I had all of them quit except 18 kids."
Goins says there were some good athletes in those 18 kids, but there was only one senior.
The Greyhounds went 8-2 that first season.
Paris was undefeated in 1973 and won the Class A state championship, beating Elkhorn City 21-12 in the finals.
Goins coached Paris from 1969 to 1978. He was the principal at Paris from 1975 to 1996.
He hired Buchanan as an assistant coach in 1988 and as the head coach in 1992.
Buchanan interviewed for assistant coaching jobs at Fort Thomas Highlands and Paris on the same day. Both schools offered Buchanan a job, and he chose Paris.
Buchanan says when he was coaching at Paris, he looked to Goins for a lot of advice.
"There were a lot of days when I would walk in and shut the door, and I’d say ‘this is what I’ m dealing with,’" Buchanan said. "And he was really good, ... he always would tell me how he would handle it, but he never made me handle it the way he would."
Goins was still the principal at Paris, when Buchanan decided to come to Mason County.
"We really had some great teams when David was [at Paris]," Goins said "We were up there around 10 wins every year."
Enrollment dropped at Paris and Goins says he told Buchanan the school was not going to have enough kids to support the kind of program Paris was accustomed to.
Goins came to the Mason County-Frankfort game three weeks ago and he says he told Buchanan that he had one of the better coaching jobs in the state here at Mason County.
"Because Mason County is the only school in the whole county," Goins said. "On Friday night, people gotta come and watch you because there’s no other show in town."
Goins and Buchanan have remained good friends.
"I have the upmost respect for him," Goins said. "I tell you, he’s just a classy guy."
Think about how fate works. A former assistant coach at Maysville, hires a young coach at Paris, who becomes the coach that turns around a losing football program at Mason County.
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