Tag Archives: Athletic Coaches

Florida Coach Lin-J Shell prevented potential tragedy on campus

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Florida Football Coach and PE teacher Lin-J Shell became a Chalkboard Hero when he prevented a potential tragedy on his school campus. 

Many talented educators have also had successful careers as athletes. One of these is Wagner Lindsell Shell, Jr., also known as Lin-J Shell. He is a former professional football player who later taught high school physical education. But he’s probably best known for foiling an incident of potential violence at his Florida school.

Lin-J was born Oct. 22, 1981. As a young man, He played college football at Jacksonville University. Later he became a professional football player, occupying the position of defensive back. He played in both the American and the Canadian Football League from 2004 to 2015. Teams he played for include the Philadelphia Eagles, the New Orleans VooDoo, the Calgary Stampeders, the Toronto Argonauts, the BC Lions, and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. For his athletic prowess, Lin-J was named an East All-Star for the Canadian Football League in 2010 and 2011. He also garnered a Grey Cup in 2014.

After he concluded his career as a pro-ball player, Lin-J accepted a position as a physical education teacher and Assistant Football Coach at Jean Ribault High School in Jacksonville, Florida. He was promoted to interim Head Football Coach at the school just days before the start of the 2019 season, he coached the team to a 4-5 record that year.

On May 9, 2018, while Lin-J was working at Ribault High as the Assistant Football Coach, that he became a hero there. He helped to prevent a woman from using a handgun in the school gymnasium when a brawl broke out. The fight was triggered when the woman became angry about a social media post involving her nephew, who happened to be one of Lin-J’s students. The woman went to the gym with four men. “She got out of the car, she was irate, basically saying she wasn’t going to let anyone jump on her family,” recalled Lin-J. When the teacher noticed that she was holding a gun, he went straight for the firearm. “I came from behind her, I saw she had a gun, I grabbed her hand, put her hand down and hit her elbow,” he continued. Then Lin-J walked the woman backwards out of the gym, holding her arm so that the gun was pointed toward the floor. All the while, he pleaded with her, “Please don’t shoot our kids.” Once he had forced the woman outside, he shouted for help from an armed officer at the school. The officer forced the woman to drop the gun and arrested her. (To read more about the incident, see this onlline article from Bell Media.)

Sadly, this Chalkboard Hero passed away from a stroke in Florida on July 29, 2021. He was only 39 years old. He also tested positive for Covid during the pandemic.

NM teacher and coach Andie Gudbegsson Redemann named Pepsi Teacher of the Month

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There are many outstanding educators who have earned recognition for their work with young people in our nation’s pubic schools. One of these is Andie Gudbegsson Redemann, a middle school Language Arts and English as a Second Language teacher and track coach in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has been named the Pepsi Teacher of the Month in April, 2026. View the YouTube video below to learn more about Andie.

Gussie Nell Davis of Texas: Trailblazing PE teacher and drill team coach

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Physical education teacher and drill team coach Gussie Davis from Texas has been credited with creating a “living art form.” Photo credit: Kilgore College Rangerettes

Every once in awhile I come across the story of a pioneering teacher that I feel I simply must share. One of them is Gussie Nell Davis, a physical education teacher and drill team coach from Texas who is credited for creating a “living art form.”

Gussie was born in Farmersville, Texas, on Nov. 4 1906. As a child she was trained to be a concert pianist. However, after she began her education at the College of Industrial Arts, now known as Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, she changed her major to physical education. Later she earned a Master’s degree from the University of Southern California.

Gussie inaugurated her career as an educator at Greenville High School in Greenville, Texas, in 1928. There she worked as a physical education teacher and pep squad direction. During her tenure there, she developed the first “dancing” pep squad in 1929.

Because of her success at Greenville, Gussie was hired to develop a similar program at Kilgore College in 1939. She developed a dancing drill team known as the Kilgore College Rangerettes, and established a performance genre that has served as a model for drill teams around the nation.

During Gussie’s 40 years as Director of the Rangerettes, her team traveled all over the country and internationally, representing Texas and the United States in South America, the Far East, Europe, and elsewhere around the world. The Rangerettes have been featured at numerous football bowl games across the nation, on national television, in movies, and on hundreds of magazine covers.

For this trailblazing work, Gussie earned many honors. She was named Honorary Citizen of Fort Worth in 1965. She received the International Citizen Citizenship Award in 1969, the Cotton Bowl Association 25th Anniversary Participation Award in 1974, a State of Texas House of Representatives Certificate of Citation, and a Distinguished Alumnae of Texas Woman’s University in 1978. She was also inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1996 she was named posthumously to the TDDTEA Texas Drill Team Hall of Fame, and in 1999, she was inducted into the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame. Kilgore College named the Rangerette Residence on their campus in her honor.

Gussie Nell Davis retired in 1979. She passed away Dec. 20, 1993, from respiratory complications. She was interred in Farmersville Cemetery in Texas.

To learn more about this trailblazing educator and coach, click on this link to the Kilgore College Rangerettes.

 

Olympic champion Samantha Livingstone was also a teacher and coach

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Samantha Arsenault Livingstone earned an Olympic Gold Medal in 2000. She later went on to teach science and coach swimming in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Photo credit: Samantha Livingstone

Oftentimes exceptional athletes become educators and/or coaches in our nation’s pubic schools. This is certainly true of Samantha Arsenault Livingstone, an Olympic Gold Medal winner who went on to teach and coach in Georgia.

Samantha was born on Oct. 11, 1981, in Peabody, Massachusetts. Her prowess as a student athlete became evident even when she was a young child. When she graduated from Gardner High School in 1999, her coaches recognized her potential as an Olympic athlete. By then, she had won several individual state championship titles, and she was instrumental in helping  her school garner two consecutive Massachusetts State team championships.

By the time she was 18, Samantha realized her potential when she qualified to compete in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. At these games she and her team members helped set a new Olympic record in the 4 x 200 meter freestyle, winning Gold Medals in the process.

After she returned home from the Olympics, Samantha enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she joined the swimming and diving team. In her sophomore year of college, she transferred to the University of Georgia, and she became a member of the swimming and diving team at that school, too.

Samantha earned both her Bachelor’s degree and her Master’s degree in Science Education from the University of Georgia. In addition, she is certified as a facilitator of Mindful Sports Performance Enhancement and is also trained in STARR (Stress + Trauma Activate, Release + Rewire) protocols.

After earning her degrees, Samantha accepted a position as a science teacher at Norcross High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia. She taught there for six years, from 2005 to 2011. She also coached swimming for two local organizations, Gwinnett County Summer programs and Swim Atlanta.

In 2016, Samantha founded Livingstone High Performance and the Whole athlete Initiative (WAI), an organization dedicated to building mental health support systems for individual athletes and athletic teams. Learn more about this by clicking on this link: WAI.

Over the course of her career as an athlete, Samantha has earned many accolades. She was named the NCAA Georgia Woman of the Year in 2005, and received the NCAA Top VIII Award the same year. She garnered the Joel Eves Award at the University of Georgia for obtaining the highest GPA for all the athletes in her graduating class, and was voted to the CoSIDA Academic All-America 1st Team. In 2018 she was inducted into the Greenfield, Massachussets’ Bay State Games Hall of Fame in recognition for her lifetime of sports achievements as a participant in their annual sporting event.

Science teacher Soichi Sakamoto coached Olympic swimmers

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Former sixth grade science teacher Soichi Sakamoto from Maui, Hawaii, became a swim coach to Olympic swimmers. Photo credit: Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation

Many fine classroom teachers also earn acclaim as athletic coaches. One of these is Soichi Sakamoto, a science teacher who also became a swim coach to Olympian athletes.

Soichi was born on August 6, 1906. In the late 1930’s, he taught sixth grade science and health at Puunene School on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The school was built in 1922 on ten acres of land donated by the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company.

At first, Soichi didn’t know anything about coaching a swim team, and his team members consisted of the children of poor sugar plantation workers. Nevertheless, the  inventive teacher established the Three-Year Swim Cub in 1937. His goal was to guide his athletes to the Olympics within three years. The indefatigable coach was able to achieve his goal of creating a team that qualified for the US Olympic team; however, the 1940 Summer Games were cancelled because of the outbreak of World War II.

To get his student athletes to their goal, the innovative coach developed a training regimen involving the use of interval training. As a form of resistance training, Soichi used area irrigation ditches to train his athletes to swim against the current. In addition, he used pulleys and weights to build upper body strength in his young swimmers, also an innovation for the times.

Eventually, Soichi became the Swim Coach at the University of Hawaii, where he served from 1946 to 1961. He also served as an Assistant Coach for the US Olympic Swim Team from 1952 to 1956. Over the course of Soichi’s career, many of his athletes competed in the Olympics, where they earned gold, silver, and bronze medals.

For his work as a swim coach, Soichi earned international accolades. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame, and the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He is also a member of the Sports Circle of Honor at the University of Hawaii.

This superlative coach passed away on Sept. 29, 1997. He was 91 years old. To document the story of this Chalkboard Champion, a book detailing his life and career was written by Julia Checkoway. The biography, published in 2015, was entitled The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory. The volume is available on  Amazon.com. You could also read this 2003 article published abut him in the Star Bulletin.