08

Lynn Burke

07-16-2007, 10:20 AM

On Aug. 1, the Peninsula Sports Club will honor Charlie Nuttycombe, who coached track and football at both Newport News and Menchville high schools for more than 30 years.

Chris Nicholson, a 1965 Hampton HS graduate, wrote this tribute to Coach Nuttycombe:

Coach Nuttycombe – A Teacher of Values
Tribute by a ’65 Crabber

How do you teach teenagers values when they are rarely paying attention? Sports is an ideal venue to accomplish this because at least the kids must pay attention in order to acquire the requisite skills and make the teams. Coaches, just like teachers, come in all sizes and abilities to influence.

Typhoon Coaches Charlie Nuttycombe and Julie Conn had a major influence on me when they showed that they were concerned about my athletic development in spite of the fact that I was a Crabber. The effect was minor at that time. But as the years passed, I found I was drawing on their unselfish interest in me and using that to modify the way I interacted with colleagues. It is amazing how small but genuine expressions of interest and concern by coaches, teachers, and mentors can have long lasting positive effects on the recipients. Through these actions, many times, are transmitted the essential knowledge of how to interact with others.

Thank you Coach Nuttycombe for being an inspiration to all those you touched.

The rivalry was intense between the Typhoons and the Crabbers in the early 1960’s as it always had been. As a Crabber high jumper at a meet at Newport News High in either 1963 or 1964, I was amazed when coach Julie Conn and later coach Charlie Nuttycombe spoke to me and offered some suggestions to improve my jumping technique.

Their words were genuine and they amazingly seemed to be trying to help me; I was confused at their interest because this was a competition between two schools who hated each other, or so it seemed to me at the time. They repeated this several more times before I graduated. Why would they be interested in improving the performance of a rival competitor? (My brother-in-law Lou Tyree had played football for Julie Conn at NNHS and was a decorated WW II and Korean War veteran. Later I learned he had called coach Conn and told him about me.)

The significance of that was lost on me for a number of years but as I matured, the testosterone influence diminished, and I was faced with other challenges, I realized that two of the most important things in life were treating people right and effective teamwork. Several times during my professional career when I questioned some aspect of my performance, I drew on the lessons learned years before from the two coaches whose efforts to help me might have had a negative impact on the “final score” but they were trying to build my confidence.

They were more interested in the development of a young man than they were in the “final score” of the track meet. The more we all focus on the development of young people, like Coach Nuttycombe always did, the better off the community, the state, the nation, and world will be. Thank you Coaches Nuttycombe and Conn for collectively having been one of several inspirations in my life.

Chris R. Nicholson
HHS - 1965
Va Tech – 1970
Retired after 31 years of federal service - 2003

		Julius "Julie" Conn If any man has ever truly been a living legend it is Julius Conn, Virginia’s premier track and basketball coach at Newport News High School for over 40 years. A native of Newport News and one of seven children, Julie Conn spent 56 years in his city’s school system as student, athlete, coach and athletic director. A diminutive distance runner and basketball player at the University of Virginia, he began coaching at Newport News High School in 1927. His basketball teams never missed playing the State Virginia High School League Tournament and they never lost a first-round game. When he gave up coaching basketball in 1953, Conn’s teams had won State titles in 1931, 1938, 1942-43, 1951-52. The Typhoon was also South Atlantic champion his first year at its helm.