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Boyce Deitz spends most of this days working on his cattle farm now in Sylva. -
Deitz brought the Maroon Devils to multiple state championships
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Former Swain County athletic director and head football coach Boyce Deitz lives these days on a farm in Sylva, where he takes care of cows and has a wide-open farm to spend his days on. Deitz was recently selected as part of the NCHSAA Hall of Fame Class of 2023 for his two decades at Swain.
He remembers details that are now decades in the past, such as players’ and fellow coaches’ names and who they played what year. On his wall in the barn is a plaque commemorating a Swain victory from 1985. Around him, cows moo loudly and lounge in the grass on a cold Friday morning.
Deitz said the following about his first years as coach, in which the team suffered a loss he still remembers.
“We made it to the playoffs,” he says. “We won the first playoff but lost the second to Maiden. I was a brand new coach. I look back now and I think, if we had been a little better, we could have won that whole thing.”
Deitz said two years later was a different story, as they came back strong and won 14-0 in and took the state championship title for 1979.
“We were all thrilled,” he said. “We were now among Murphy, Robbinsville, Franklin—we won one. For the next 17 years, we ended up winning more playoffs than any other school in the state of North Carolina.”
Deitz was athletic director and football coach at Swain County High School for 20 years, from 1977 to 1996. During that span, the Maroon Devils won 201 games and lost just 58. Coach Deitz brought the Maroon Devils Football team to win five NCHSAA State Football Championships beginning with its first in 1979.
While he’s talking, he pauses the interview to take a phone call, which he says was a former student calling to chat briefly.
Deitz said there are numerous former students he coached who he still keeps up with, some of them are nearing 60 years old and still talk to him now and then to catch up.
“They’re my kids, they’re my boys,” he said. “A lot of them will text or call me or come see me. We’ll have lunch together sometimes. I’d like to say it’s all of them, but it’s not all of them. Some of them have gone and moved. But there’s a lot of contact with kids I coached.”
One former student he coached recently helped him chop some wood for the farm. “That makes you feel special,” he said. “It’s been 30 years since I coached him. A lot of them still keep their eye on you.”
Getting reflective for a moment, Deitz said there were definitely some things he looks back on with some regrets.
“I did make mistakes, things where I looked back and thought ‘that was kind of foolish,’” he said. “When you’re in the moment in a game, you get excited or irritated, and you say something to a kid where you think ‘I wish I hadn’t said that,’ because kids will remember everything you say to them.”
But he said he has become more seasoned and mature the older he’s gotten. And he’s thought long and hard about the impact a good coach can have on their students.
When Deitz was young, he also had a great coach. He said he kept in touch with that coach the same way some students still reach out to him.
“I had a real good Dad, but I look back at him, and a lot of times I thought of [my coach] as my Dad also,” he said.
Deitz said his time as coach had effects that continued after he was gone, with subsequent head coach Sam Pattillo being one of Deitz’s students.
“Sam Pattillo, who played on the first state championship as the quarterback, became the head coach at Swain and then he won a state championship,” he said. “It’s not that we did well. We left a legacy, and the legacy is still doing well.”
He said there is a bond between high school athletes that isn’t like most other school-year bonds.
“You remember who played beside you,” Deitz said. “If you were a guard, you remember the catcher or the tackle. It’s not like that in algebra. It doesn’t mean algebra is less important than football. The bond in sports is more important. It’s something to hang onto.”