- September 12, 2024
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Mainland assistant coach Terry Anthony holds the T-shirt up that says it all — the Buccaneers have had 30 consecutive playoff appearances. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainland High School Athletic Director Terrence Anthony. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainalnd football coaches Arthur Westbrook, Terry Anthony and AJ Mallory on Pop Warner Day at the Derbyshire Sports Complex. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainland Athletic Director Terry Anthony gives the kids the full quarterback experience at the Pop Warner Day practice. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainland football coach and athletic director Terry Anthony receives the ball as he helps run quarterback drills on Pop Warner Day at the Derbyshire Sports Complex. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainland center Jaelin Long (right) and Athletic Director Terry Anthony. Photo by Michele Meyers
Mainland High School athletic director Terry Anthony, known by many as “The Godfather,” is stepping down as an assistant football coach. He said he will use the time in the fall to focus on his AD duties and will continue to be head track and field coach in the spring.
“I still love football,” he said. “I want to be a better AD for all of the sports on the campus and, quite frankly, I can’t be that for those fall sports because I’m so embroiled in being a football coach. For the past 15 years, I was the head assistant coach and handled all the logistics. For me to do all that and be the athletic director, it was tough. I didn’t think I was giving the other sports enough attention.”
Last school year, he said it was a stretch for him to do it all since the Buccaneers extended their football season, winning the state championship in Tallahassee in December. In March, both boys and girls basketball teams advanced to the state final four in Lakeland.
“Football is a year-around sport and with me being the athletic director and the head track coach, even though track is a spring sport, it was still being affected by me being a football coach and that’s not fair to my track kids,” he said. “They deserve the best. I love my kids and they are just as successful as my football kids.”
Twenty-nine years ago, Anthony returned to Daytona Beach when his mother died. Anthony, a Mainland graduate, was a star wide receiver at Florida State and played in 10 games in the NFL for the Tampa Bay Bucs. His plan was to stay in Daytona for two years so his younger sisters could get established.
He said he remembered that Dick Toth, his former basketball coach and the Mainland athletic director at the time, had offered him a job during a previous visit. Anthony reached out and Toth got him a job as an assistant football coach.
“Dick Toth has always been a man who has looked out for me,” Anthony said. “He is probably the man most responsible for me being at Mainland High School. I owe him a debt of gratitude that I can never repay. To me, still to this day, he is a figure in my life that I will always cherish.
Coach T.A. might not coach football anymore but his coaching style, knowledge of the game and love for these kids will live on in the Mainland football program, not just through me but our staff. Right now, there are eight other coaches who were coached and loved by T.A. We all bring a little of Coach T.A. to the field every day.
— A.J. MALLORY, Mainland assistant athletic director and head baseball coach
Former Mainland head coach Scott Wilson said he had the pleasure of working by Anthony’s side for 20-plus years. They were both assistant coaches when John Maronto was the head football coach. In 2010, Maronto resigned and Wilson took his position then quickly made Anthony the head assistant coach. They coached together until Wilson resigned in 2021 to pursue an administrative position.
“T.A. is an unprecedented and rare life coach, teacher, mentor, athletics coach and a surrogate father to so many people,” Wilson said. “Though he’s a former NFL player and a legend at FSU, he is so humble in his mannerisms that you would never know. T.A. is an elite coach that has always given up more of himself towards those he coaches that can ever be realized.”
Throughout his tenure at Mainland, Anthony has held a variety of administrative and coaching positions. Mainland assistant athletic director and head baseball coach A.J. Mallory said he has known Anthony since 1998 when Anthony was his junior varsity baseball coach during Mallory's freshman year. In Mallory's last three years of high school, Anthony was his football coach.
“Coach T.A. was one of the hardest and most demanding coaches I’ve ever had but I learned he was coaching me to the potential he saw in me,” Mallory said. “His coaching took me to college where I was able to succeed in athletics, academics and life.”
Mallory returned to work at Mainland in 2011 and began to coach wide receivers. In 2014, Anthony brought him in to assist with the track team. Mallory said their relationship has grown from one of a player and coach to being one of friendship and a big brother figure he can count on for practically anything.
“Coach T.A. might not coach football anymore but his coaching style, knowledge of the game and love for these kids will live on in the Mainland football program, not just through me but our staff,” Mallory said. “Right now, there are eight other coaches who were coached and loved by T.A. We all bring a little of Coach T.A. to the field every day.”
In 2021, Anthony received the first Volusia County Mentor of the Year award. He said leaving football may give him the opportunity to be a part of more mentorship programs.
In the meantime, he said he will continue to live by these words: “Success is not determined by the number of games won but by the number of lives changed in the process.”
