Gary Wilson

A strip of tape mending a broken nose obscures much of the young football player’s face. But the eyes staring up from the yellowed newspaper clipping are unmistakably those of Gary Wilson. It was fifty years ago and Wilson had been named star of the week as a fullback for Northeast Minneapolis’s Edison High School team. He began playing the game at age nine, and in many ways never stopped.

“One season just goes into another,” says Wilson, recalling his fifty-year career as a volunteer coach in North and Northeast Minneapolis (save for the one year he coached “across the river”). “I love the kids and I love the sports.”

Today, dressed in black athletic shorts and an NFL T-shirt, Wilson certainly looks the part of a coach. But to call him just a coach would be an understatement. For fifty seasons, he has done more than coach all ages and skill levels in baseball, basketball, and football. He has, with the help of his wife, Janet, provided rides, warm postgame meals, spaghetti dinners, end-of-season banquets, and a “little discipline and goals for kids who might not have any.” He’s repaired or raised funds to replace uniforms and equipment, which the kids can’t afford.

In December 2006, 400 people were on hand at Farview Park to celebrate the dedication of the Gary Wilson Gymnasium—the first of its kind in North Minneapolis—to Wilson. It’s estimated that he has coached more than 3,000 youths in his career—many of whom have grown up and returned to the park program to place their own children under his watchful eye. He always enjoys getting letters and phone calls from past players. And he starts each practice with one goal in mind.

“Whether they’re learning to spell or count through calisthenics, they are learning something and bettering themselves,” Wilson says. “Winning, going to championships, those are just a bonus.”