Athletic greatness comes in all shapes and all sizes.

It doesn't come naturally, but is achieved from hard work, diligence and adversity along the journey.

There's opportunity and there's always struggle.

There is triumph and there is defeat, and there is always a story behind the glory.

It's not hard to say that M.L.

Woodruff put Parkview Baptist baseball in the minds of high school baseball fans.

After 23 playoff appearances and a remarkable 11 state championships, and those titles came in the 1980s, the 90s and the decades of the 2000.

Parkview Eagles were 22 and oh in all state semifinals and finals in which they played.

He's very spiritual.

He was very dedicated to his players, to whatever job he's doing.

Just puts everything he can into it.

You know, kind of the old saying, if you build it, they will come, you know.

And then I remember Coach Woodruff telling me one time he was like, I was kind of ready to retire before I did.

But we just kept winning.

And.

Coach Mel Woodruff is great.

It is great to see you.

Great to see you.

Congratulations on this spectacular outing here at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

Thank you so much.

Have a seat.

Let's get to know you a little bit better.

Anybody who follows high school baseball already knows you and your accomplishments.

But I'm curious because I'm quoting now from something you said.

This is a story about God putting me in places I never belonged.

I never wanted to be a coach, but I needed a job.

So I became a coach.

Not just any coach, I might add.

So tell me about the genesis of your career.

Yes, Lynn, I wanted to be an elementary PE teacher.

I have a a PE degree now to this degree, but a PE degree.

I love working with young kids.

I was scared of older kids and I didn't want to teach them because I felt they were disrespected.

So my first teaching job was at Freshwater Elementary and then the Springs, and it was the greatest job of all.

I taught for one year elementary kids, but I didn't know this until the end of the school year.

Was the guy that I took his place as the elementary PE teacher.

He went somewhere else that year and took somebody else's place, was on a sabbatical.

He was the principal at that school for a year, and he came back to his job, and it left me without a job, seniority took over.

Then?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So you're out of a job?

Yeah.

So what happens next?

I get a phone call from the, Livingston Parish School Board saying there was a job at French settlement coaching, basketball and teaching six different, history classes.

I said, I don't want to do that.

I'll go do something else.

And then later I got another phone call and says, hey, we got a job opening at Doyle High School in Livingston.

It's, you the assistant football coach?

I hadn't played football since seventh grade.

I would be the head baseball coach, and I played at LSU.

and I would teach, coed physical education to seventh and eighth graders.

I said, I'll try that.

I'll try that.

So from there to Parkview Baptist.

Well, before I got to part me, when I was still at Doyle, my first year, I was coaching, the parents were getting together.

My assistant coach told.

Says they don't think you're going to make it through the year.

They think that the kids are going to run you off.

So I was, you know, I was fearful and scared to death because I didn't want to coach older kids or teach older kids because they would disrespect.

So you're like 23, 24, 23 years old.

Yeah, exactly.

So, we started practicing and playing some games and stuff, and I had a catcher that was a good athlete, but when he threw the ball, he went down backing up.

He had a good arm, but he couldn't throw anybody out.

So I knew that I was going to have to coach him.

I knew that I was going to have to try to change his throwing motion, but he's about six three and I was about five nine on a good day.

But I went home and I practiced.

I got down in the stance I never got in my life by going to the field early that day, and I started work with him and showed him how to be short out of a glove.

And, you know what he did?

And he listened to every word I said.

And at that point in time, I just felt in my spirit God saying, Mel, you can do this.

You can do this.

So that was really when I first time I really felt called, like I might be able to be able to coach.

So if I can use the word calling, you felt something at that moment that this is where I need to be.

I did, I did, I felt like, I had some gift talents and abilities inside of me that I didn't know that I had.

And I got a chance to, to live those out through Coach.

30 years of teaching and coaching, 603 victories.

National coach of the year, countless young athletes from the Baton Rouge area realize this coach was a mentor, a father figure, and to many, a lifelong friend.

I remember that game days were the days that we showed up and we got to have fun.

what?

Do you hold us accountable?

Absolutely.

but the practices and the the preparation, the lead up to those game days were always the most, strenuous time for us.

And we showed up to games, and it was it was easy.

For.

And crazy things like, it's a great day to get better, leave it better than you found it.

And we just instilled as a kid.

So the expectations were high.

Not based on talent level, but based on just how we did things.

So I say this winning was not what we did.

It was an outcome of how we did it and who we did it for.

After you told me an interesting story when we spoke about, you know, artificial turf is great, but he always like grass.

And, one of the things that you miss when you don't have grass and real dirt is you don't have to tarp your field and tarping the field is kind of like the ultimate team exercise, and you wouldn't think about that as being significant.

But he thought it was.

When I think of Parkview baseball, I think about a program that was designed thinking about a championship victory.

there wasn't anything that we did in this program that did not have our end goal in sight.

That was why we were here, right?

We were here because of the legacy that was started back in the mid 80s.

That coach had cultivated for the better part of 20 years.

This was a period of blue ribbon baseball out of Parkview Baptist High School.

And so many years in a row and so many years of winning and winning and winning and winning, that doesn't happen by accident.

What was it in your philosophy that that brought these guys together and brought them to their full potential?

Well, before we got to the point where we won regularly, we lost a lot.

So my first year of coaching at Parkview, we won one game, lost 20, and tied to and then we started improving, went 20 and five.

And then the third year we went 24 and one and won our first state championship.

But you know, some of the things that I think we did, to build a program was a great care for kids.

And I found that as a coach that, not only was I, gifted in some, some areas, but God gave me the ability to look at young man and look for the gold and go in there and get it, go in there, get those skills, those abilities, those talents out of young men and help them become better.

And then not only looking for skills that help you win baseball games, but look for things about their character, who they were, who they could become.

And that's what I figured out as a coach along the way that, I was gifted that way to be able to do those things, and then how to build, young men to become together because the world we live in today is so separate.

Everybody goes their own own way.

And, it's a very selfish world we live in.

So, I enjoy trying to build teams together.

And, you know, I coached 24, 24 years, out of the 27, I was an athlete athletic director for a couple years.

But, it was so fun.

And, seeing kids buying in.

So the other thing would be ownership getting the kids to own the program, or they they had buy in.

So you read crazy stories about me and working on fields, and I had a lawn mower when I was six years old, and, we should do crazy things like, line up on the infield, like we were on a tarmac of, of an airplane lined up shoulder to shoulder and pick up rocks.

And I would tell them, you you realize that one rock could cost you a different championship.

So the details were what we tried to instill in our kids and, and, and most of them bought in most of the years.

The state High School Athletics Association, State Baseball Coaches Association, and Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame have inducted him into their halls of fame.

He's much more than 11 state championships, much more than, his winning percentage reflects.

He is, a guy of character, guy, integrity and somebody that taught the game of life through baseball.

But if you ask Coach Mel Woodruff, those accolades will never compare to the sense of purpose he feels by also assisting in spiritual guidance to young people.

And I mean, you see the banners and the signs on the wall for state championships.

coach, you can't go play in the big leagues.

He can't go throw pitches anymore, but he can lead young men.

And that's the measure of success.

Successful.

And he's certainly at the top of that list.

If you were to do it over again, even with the initial apprehension of getting into coaching, would you make that same choice or would you go off in another path and try to use the values that you have in another way?

That's a good question.

I haven't thought about that, but I can say that God directed my paths and I don't think there was any other path.

I think that God orchestrated the whole story to, start a baseball program had brought me back to school to start a sports ministry.

The story of a Baptist church.

Chapter two.

And then chapter three will be starting Bible studies in high schools for coaches.

So I think all those things were put in step orchestrated by God for his glory.

You know, we could have won 12 state championships.

13 what is the really the difference?

So the difference was, impacting the lives of others.

So as a baseball coach, I could impact 50 or 60 boys when I wanted the sports ministry, I could impact thousands of kids, thousands of kids.

And I felt like that was the next calling for me.

And the the coaching led me to the next step.

The things that you've talked about here today, would they apply in 2023 to high school kids?

Would the same benefits be available to them if coaches did it that way today and some do.

But are we in an age where we can't rescue, if you will, those athletes?

Right.

So it's a broken world we live in and sports are broken.

So for me, getting into sports ministry, it was seeing that sports were moving further away from God rather than closer to God, because God gave us this sports for pleasure, for fun, and also draw us back to himself.

So if I was going to do it over again today land, I would, I'd coach parents.

I would spend more time talking to them about how they how how they coach their kids.

A parent has a great place to watch their kids play sport and see it this as, something they can do to step in through their lives.