‘Once I started, I didn’t want to do anything else:’ Coach finds fulfillment on & off field

By Ed DiOrio

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    BREVARD, North Carolina (WLOS) — After Shane Worley graduated from Brevard High School, he wasn’t quite sure where life would take him.

“I was enjoying what I was doing,” Worley said. “I was working to have fun.”

But he didn’t feel fulfilled.

‘Once I started, I didn’t want to do anything else:’ Coach finds fulfillment on & off field

Tributes pour in for marching band director, retired teacher killed in bus crash That is until one day in 1999, when one of his former football coaches brought him to a practice with 11-year-olds.

“I didn’t really have a plan,” Worley said. “I started coaching in that age group, and I loved it. Once I started, I didn’t want to do anything else.”

He had found what he was meant to do.

“I didn’t have a point or a passion, but when I started pouring into those kids, with the little bit [about coaching] that I knew at the time, that was really meaningful to me,” he said. “Looking back, that was an important part of my life. That was a changing point in how I was growing up into a man.”

Worley’s passion led him to being brought on as a varsity assistant for the Blue Devils in 2004. And he’s still coaching today.

“I’m glad that I’ve been here this long because the kids deserve consistency,” he said. “The players are the best part of the job. The students at the school are the best part of the job.”

And it shows.

“All the kids up there love him,” Brevard Head Coach Luke Coleman said. “Everybody loves coach Worley.”

“He takes all of his time out and gives it to every one of us,” Senior lineman Riley Anderson said. “He always makes sure that we’re all OK. He’ll do anything for us, and he shows that every day.”

Coaching football gave something else to Worley besides a bond with the team.

“Getting into coaching introduced me to my wife and it got me into teaching,” Worley said.

Worley became a certified science teacher in 2015. In 2022, he won the school’s Teacher of the Year Award, thanks in large part to the bond he’s consistently trying to grow with his players, and his students.

“Once I saw how all kids up there gravitate to him with whatever it is, it really is important to have a guy like that,” Coleman said. “This community is very lucky to have him in their school.”

“I strive to be like him because I know everyone knows they can go talk to him,” Anderson said. “I want to be like that. I want people to know they can come talk to me.”

On the sidelines, and in the classroom, Worley had found his purpose.

“I think my mission is to reach kids,” Worley said. “That’s why God put me on this earth.”

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