Memorial Day Perspective: Championship Coach & Former Marine Monte Sherrill Proud of “Being on the Red, White and Blue Team”

Current Pfeiffer University Head Coach Monte Sherrill has had an amazing career with multiple championships won at the college and high school levels.

This year, his Falcons team finished 16-1 in the abbreviated season, but the two previous years in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (Div. III the last three years, Div. II when Sherrill took the job), Pfeiffer was the ECAC champions with records of 36-7 and 37-5, respectively.

Having just completed his fifth year as Head Coach at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina, and with an additional 26 years of experience at the high school level, Coach Sherrill’s coaching record stands at an amazing 926 – 98 with a remarkable amazing stat: 30 titles garnered in 30 years’ time!

That includes 10 high school state championships in North Carolina alone for the Hiddenite, N.C. native.

In 2019, Coach Sherrill picked up his 900th combined coaching wins for high school and college and the achievement didn’t go unnoticed by his peers.

“Coach Monte Sherrill has a coaching record that is not just defined by an amazing won and loss record, it is defined by excellence in every area of his involvement,” Gerry Glasco, the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns Head Coach said at the time of the milestone victory.

“His work habit, his leadership skills, and his competitive drive all become instilled in his teams and athletes and those athletes will carry his legacy on in their lives forever,” Coach Glasco continued. “He is a winner and his athletes therefore become winners for far longer than any individual softball game, season or career will last. Coach Monte is simply one of the best softball coaches to ever coach in our sport.”

Sherill attributes his success to having served six years in the Marines which we chronicled last May in the article “Parris Island Pinstripes: How the Marine Background of Coaching Legend Monte Sherrill “Changed the Game.”

We asked Coach Sherrill what Memorial Day meant to him in light of his time serving his country… here’s what he had to say: 

*****

Memorial Day is an overlooked day of remembrance.

Sure, everyone acknowledges the reason they are off work for a day; but for the ones like me, the last Monday in May is a day of paramount importance.

This day is all about honoring the Red, White and Blue Team.

Take a moment to think about what the day really means. In our nation’s history, we’ve had over 650,000 service members choose to pay the ultimate sacrifice of their life “in-combat.” Now, triple that number for those who have died in training or in non-combat situations.

That gives you just a small look into the significance of Memorial Day.

My softball team begins training for the pre-game ceremony known as the National Anthem in the Fall. We cross our heart with our hats. We listen to the words in complete and undisturbed silence for the flag that waves.

And we stand still – not a muscle moved – until the last note sounds of the 79-second U.S. Air Force rendition. Only the yell of “play ball” by one of our captains releases our players to move.

On a crisp Saturday morning in September each year, my players load up a bus for a field trip. We travel roughly 30 minutes northwest and arrive at our destination: the National Cemetery in Salisbury, North Carolina.

We unload in silence and walk a few hundred yards past the rows of perfectly-aligned white cemetery markers in an open field.

This field is ear-marked as the mass grave of 11,700 unnamed Civil War soldiers. My players take a seat in a circle formation. There are no sounds, no distractions.

I open with a brief history of the cemetery and the field and what both represent. Then, a coach hands each player a strip of white paper. On it, is a quote about sacrifice or dedication to country. We go around the circle, each player reading the words on their paper.

I try to find a Medal of Honor winner who died that has the same last name as every player to build a history of patriotism in each player. Each player reads the history of that service member.

And, it’s almost as if the area surrounding us feels heavy and crowded.

Soon enough, it’s a circle of wet eyes. Emotion shows—in pride, in sorrow, in admiration and respect, in humility, in togetherness, in emptiness, but most of all, in thankfulness.

Thankfulness to those U.S. service members who turned their backs on selfishness and self-interest, and instead, chose self-sacrifice. It’s through their stories that we apply the trait to our team, our unit.

We reject the familiar logic belonging to players only in it for themselves; players who refuse to lower themselves to “bunt” or sacrifice for the sake of showing their individual skills are not welcome.

Strange how understanding the price that others paid for our past victories as a nation creates a paradigm shift for games played under the Stars and Stripes.

After the last quote has been read, my players walk to the headstones of the unnamed service members’ gravestones and pray over them. We cannot bring them back, but we can honor their sacrifice and final breaths taken in the service of our Country.

Happy Memorial Day to all those men who laid down the ultimate sacrifice bunt for the Red, White and Blue Team.

Let us all stand united in remembrance of them on Memorial Day and every game where the anthem is played. The freedom we have to play the game was not free.

Semper Fi.

— Monte Sherrill

Join us on Monday for more on “What Memorial Day Means to Me.”