The end of the line for Rhine
Sharp calls it a career after 36 years of coaching soccer
By Paul Durham
Sports Editor
He’s no Forrest Gump but like the fictional character of movie and book fame who had a front-row seat for many historical moments, Rhine Sharp can lay claim to having been a part of so much of Wilson’s soccer history.
Sharp, who grew up watching the first soccer teams at Atlantic Christian (now Barton) College, played on the first soccer team at Fike High. He went on to play at Atlantic Christian before embarking on a 36-year coaching career that ended May 20 when his Community Christian School girls team lost in the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association 1-A semifinals.
While the love of soccer and coaching runs thick in Sharp’s blood, he knew it was time to walk away after coaching dozens, if not hundreds, of young women and men over the years.
“Just seeing the kids mature and become young adults,” he said. “That’s one of the things that I’ve tried to instill in all the kids that I’ve coached. No. 1, you can do and be anything you want to be, but it just doesn’t happen. The majority of people in the world are going to have to work for it and that’s a life lesson.”
It might be difficult to imagine Sharp’s boundless energy sitting still during soccer season, but he assured that he would not be a stranger to the game he loves so much.
“I’m going to go out and watch the kids from here (CCS seniors Hailey Dail, Jordan London and Eulyssa Giddings) play at Barton (in the fall),” he said. I’m going to watch the (CCS) boys play and next spring, I’ll go out to the (CCS) girls games.”
Sharp even said that should his successor, Monica Mills, need help running a practice, he would be glad to pitch in.
“You can’t cold turkey just walk away from something that you love and never set foot on the field again,” he said.
A SOCCER LIFE
Sharp’s love for soccer didn’t come first. Like most young boys growing up in Wilson in the late 1960s, football was his passion because of the success of the Fike High Cyclones, who won three straight North Carolina High School Athletic Association 4-A championships. But Sharp’s growth spurt was still a year or two away when he didn’t make the team at Charles L. Coon Junior High.
Having been around the soccer team at Atlantic Christian, where his father, Allan Sharp was a professor for more than 20 years and served as the faculty athletics representative, Rhine Sharp knew a bit about the game, which was just beginning to make inroads in the United States.
Sharp was invited by friends Walston Peters and Harry Gauss to play soccer on Wednesday nights at Greenfield School, which had the first high school soccer team in Wilson County.
“One thing led to another and then they started the program at Fike and I went on to play there,” Sharp said.
Under the direction of Steve Partenheimer, Fike began a club soccer team in the fall of 1973, when Sharp was in 10th grade. The Titans, as they were called then, played their first varsity match in 1974 with Sharp on the team.
He went on to play at Atlantic Christian under the Bulldogs’ first head coach, David Adkins, and assistant coach Mike Smith, and alongside such teammates as Gary Hall, who would serve as Barton men’s head coach and athletic director for more than 20 years; David Smallwood, Larry Cleveland, Tony Barriteau, Elfatih Eltom and Kawa Aljaff.
FROM PLAYING TO COACHING
Upon graduation from Atlantic Christian in 1980, Sharp landed a teaching job at Greenfield, where he was an assistant coach to Lee Horton.
“I already knew Lee because all the guys at AC who had graduated played club ball with all the older guys,” Sharp said, referring to the Wilson Mirage club team founded by Woody Harrison for which Sharp played.
Sharp was the Knights head coach for one year after Horton left and coached the Damsels for two seasons. However, his teaching career ended in 1984 when he went into the insurance business, but he continued to coach at the recreation level. Sharp and Partenheimer, who went on to be Hunt’s first boys soccer coach before moving into private business himself, found themselves leading a Wilson Recreation Department boys team.
“Steve and I got a wild hair and decided that we missed the coaching part of it and thought, ‘Let’s do a rec team!’” he said.
They also put together a travel team, not associated with North Carolina Youth Soccer Association, that would play in tournaments.
After doing that for a number of years, as well as working with youngsters on the side, Sharp returned to coaching at the scholastic level when he and his wife Pegi’s three daughters — Carli, Caroline and Meredith — were students at Wilson Christian Academy.
Sharp and former Atlantic Christian teammate Willie Diamond, along with Wilson Christian athletic director Malcolm Deans, started the boys and girls teams at Wilson Christian in the 1998-99 school year, just after school ended its football program.
“I started talking to Malcolm about it and said we need to put a soccer team out here,” Sharp said. “We put together a team and it was pretty doggone stout.”
The Lady Chargers started playing first with Deans, Sharp and Diamond overseeing them.
A NEW START AT CCS
However, before the Wilson Christian boys team started playing a varsity schedule, Sharp was part of a group that founded Community Christian School in 2000 with a familiar nickname for its athletic teams.
“David Rose and I really pushed the Cyclones thing because we grew up being big Wilson Cyclones fans,” Sharp said.
He started the girls program with daughter Carli on his first team. From then on, Sharp only coached girls soccer, which made sense considering all three of his daughters played for him.
“I get along fine with them and I get along fine with the boys, but you’ve got to understand that you’re dealing with two different animals,” he said of his penchant for coaching female players. “You let some things fly under the radar and let it go (with girls).”
Under his direction, the Lady Cyclones reached the NCISAA playoffs 14 out of his 17 seasons at the helm, starting in 2002. The pinnacle of Sharp’s tenure came in 2008 when CCS won its first state championship of any kind.
“I’d have to say that very first state championship run was the most miraculous thing in my coaching career,” he said.
The Lady Cyclones, seeded No. 8, upset top-seeded Trinity Academy 2-1 on a golden goal in overtime in the first round before upending Gaston Day by the same score in overtime in the semifinals.
CCS claimed the championship at Gillette Soccer Complex by edging Faith Christian in a shootout. Sharp recounted with glee how the CCS prom, a midnight cruise on a boat at the beach, had been scheduled for the same date and, when he boarded the boat, he was hugging the NCISAA championship trophy.
The next year, in 2009, the Lady Cyclones cruised to their second straight state title, a feat no team has done since.
Besides winning state championships, Sharp has been a driving force in the development of the school’s soccer field, from the time he put in used sprinkler heads that Wilson Country Club had donated to the installation of lights there.
“That’s really where I started honing my skills in terms of growing grass,” he said.
After his youngest daughter, Meredith, graduated from CCS in 2010 before going on to play at Barton, Sharp mulled the possibility of retiring from coaching but held off.
“First of all the love of the game,” he said. “Second of all, we had put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into really building the program and building a condition of getting things set up. It felt right and we had great parents and great kids and that’s what makes you kind of come back.”
He vowed to Dail and Giddings when they were in 10th grade that he would stay at CCS until they graduated and that’s what he did.
While Sharp certainly loves the game of soccer and wanted to be able to coach his daughters, it’s clear that he enjoyed coaching his players more than coaching soccer. He rattles off the names of players he coached in the 1980s at Greenfield or in the 1990s at Wilson Christian as quickly as the ones he’s coached in the last few years at CCS. He’s especially proud of having coached the daughters of three players on his Greenfield teams — Susan Black Strauch, Mollie Benson Dorsey and Sarah Thorne Mercer.
Just working with young people and watching them grow into adults has been Sharp’s reward all these years.
“The thing that probably gets me going more than anything else is to see what these kids turn into after graduating high school and start raising their own families,” he said.
Sharp calls it a career after 36 years of coaching soccer
By Paul Durham
Sports Editor
He’s no Forrest Gump but like the fictional character of movie and book fame who had a front-row seat for many historical moments, Rhine Sharp can lay claim to having been a part of so much of Wilson’s soccer history.
Sharp, who grew up watching the first soccer teams at Atlantic Christian (now Barton) College, played on the first soccer team at Fike High. He went on to play at Atlantic Christian before embarking on a 36-year coaching career that ended May 20 when his Community Christian School girls team lost in the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association 1-A semifinals.
While the love of soccer and coaching runs thick in Sharp’s blood, he knew it was time to walk away after coaching dozens, if not hundreds, of young women and men over the years.
“Just seeing the kids mature and become young adults,” he said. “That’s one of the things that I’ve tried to instill in all the kids that I’ve coached. No. 1, you can do and be anything you want to be, but it just doesn’t happen. The majority of people in the world are going to have to work for it and that’s a life lesson.”
It might be difficult to imagine Sharp’s boundless energy sitting still during soccer season, but he assured that he would not be a stranger to the game he loves so much.
“I’m going to go out and watch the kids from here (CCS seniors Hailey Dail, Jordan London and Eulyssa Giddings) play at Barton (in the fall),” he said. I’m going to watch the (CCS) boys play and next spring, I’ll go out to the (CCS) girls games.”
Sharp even said that should his successor, Monica Mills, need help running a practice, he would be glad to pitch in.
“You can’t cold turkey just walk away from something that you love and never set foot on the field again,” he said.
A SOCCER LIFE
Sharp’s love for soccer didn’t come first. Like most young boys growing up in Wilson in the late 1960s, football was his passion because of the success of the Fike High Cyclones, who won three straight North Carolina High School Athletic Association 4-A championships. But Sharp’s growth spurt was still a year or two away when he didn’t make the team at Charles L. Coon Junior High.
Having been around the soccer team at Atlantic Christian, where his father, Allan Sharp was a professor for more than 20 years and served as the faculty athletics representative, Rhine Sharp knew a bit about the game, which was just beginning to make inroads in the United States.
Sharp was invited by friends Walston Peters and Harry Gauss to play soccer on Wednesday nights at Greenfield School, which had the first high school soccer team in Wilson County.
“One thing led to another and then they started the program at Fike and I went on to play there,” Sharp said.
Under the direction of Steve Partenheimer, Fike began a club soccer team in the fall of 1973, when Sharp was in 10th grade. The Titans, as they were called then, played their first varsity match in 1974 with Sharp on the team.
He went on to play at Atlantic Christian under the Bulldogs’ first head coach, David Adkins, and assistant coach Mike Smith, and alongside such teammates as Gary Hall, who would serve as Barton men’s head coach and athletic director for more than 20 years; David Smallwood, Larry Cleveland, Tony Barriteau, Elfatih Eltom and Kawa Aljaff.
FROM PLAYING TO COACHING
Upon graduation from Atlantic Christian in 1980, Sharp landed a teaching job at Greenfield, where he was an assistant coach to Lee Horton.
“I already knew Lee because all the guys at AC who had graduated played club ball with all the older guys,” Sharp said, referring to the Wilson Mirage club team founded by Woody Harrison for which Sharp played.
Sharp was the Knights head coach for one year after Horton left and coached the Damsels for two seasons. However, his teaching career ended in 1984 when he went into the insurance business, but he continued to coach at the recreation level. Sharp and Partenheimer, who went on to be Hunt’s first boys soccer coach before moving into private business himself, found themselves leading a Wilson Recreation Department boys team.
“Steve and I got a wild hair and decided that we missed the coaching part of it and thought, ‘Let’s do a rec team!’” he said.
They also put together a travel team, not associated with North Carolina Youth Soccer Association, that would play in tournaments.
After doing that for a number of years, as well as working with youngsters on the side, Sharp returned to coaching at the scholastic level when he and his wife Pegi’s three daughters — Carli, Caroline and Meredith — were students at Wilson Christian Academy.
Sharp and former Atlantic Christian teammate Willie Diamond, along with Wilson Christian athletic director Malcolm Deans, started the boys and girls teams at Wilson Christian in the 1998-99 school year, just after school ended its football program.
“I started talking to Malcolm about it and said we need to put a soccer team out here,” Sharp said. “We put together a team and it was pretty doggone stout.”
The Lady Chargers started playing first with Deans, Sharp and Diamond overseeing them.
A NEW START AT CCS
However, before the Wilson Christian boys team started playing a varsity schedule, Sharp was part of a group that founded Community Christian School in 2000 with a familiar nickname for its athletic teams.
“David Rose and I really pushed the Cyclones thing because we grew up being big Wilson Cyclones fans,” Sharp said.
He started the girls program with daughter Carli on his first team. From then on, Sharp only coached girls soccer, which made sense considering all three of his daughters played for him.
“I get along fine with them and I get along fine with the boys, but you’ve got to understand that you’re dealing with two different animals,” he said of his penchant for coaching female players. “You let some things fly under the radar and let it go (with girls).”
Under his direction, the Lady Cyclones reached the NCISAA playoffs 14 out of his 17 seasons at the helm, starting in 2002. The pinnacle of Sharp’s tenure came in 2008 when CCS won its first state championship of any kind.
“I’d have to say that very first state championship run was the most miraculous thing in my coaching career,” he said.
The Lady Cyclones, seeded No. 8, upset top-seeded Trinity Academy 2-1 on a golden goal in overtime in the first round before upending Gaston Day by the same score in overtime in the semifinals.
CCS claimed the championship at Gillette Soccer Complex by edging Faith Christian in a shootout. Sharp recounted with glee how the CCS prom, a midnight cruise on a boat at the beach, had been scheduled for the same date and, when he boarded the boat, he was hugging the NCISAA championship trophy.
The next year, in 2009, the Lady Cyclones cruised to their second straight state title, a feat no team has done since.
Besides winning state championships, Sharp has been a driving force in the development of the school’s soccer field, from the time he put in used sprinkler heads that Wilson Country Club had donated to the installation of lights there.
“That’s really where I started honing my skills in terms of growing grass,” he said.
After his youngest daughter, Meredith, graduated from CCS in 2010 before going on to play at Barton, Sharp mulled the possibility of retiring from coaching but held off.
“First of all the love of the game,” he said. “Second of all, we had put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into really building the program and building a condition of getting things set up. It felt right and we had great parents and great kids and that’s what makes you kind of come back.”
He vowed to Dail and Giddings when they were in 10th grade that he would stay at CCS until they graduated and that’s what he did.
While Sharp certainly loves the game of soccer and wanted to be able to coach his daughters, it’s clear that he enjoyed coaching his players more than coaching soccer. He rattles off the names of players he coached in the 1980s at Greenfield or in the 1990s at Wilson Christian as quickly as the ones he’s coached in the last few years at CCS. He’s especially proud of having coached the daughters of three players on his Greenfield teams — Susan Black Strauch, Mollie Benson Dorsey and Sarah Thorne Mercer.
Just working with young people and watching them grow into adults has been Sharp’s reward all these years.
“The thing that probably gets me going more than anything else is to see what these kids turn into after graduating high school and start raising their own families,” he said.
