FLORENCESC – Billy Andrews will soon enter his 45th season as West Florence boys’ soccer coach. But it will be his first as a SC High School Soccer Coaches Association Hall of Famer.
“It’s an honor,” Andrews said. “It means a lot. It means a lot of years of hard work and a lot of years working with kids and a lot of years traveling back and forth from high schools all over the state.
“It seems so long, but it seems so short.”
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Andrews, a Wilson graduate, was the South Carolina boys’ 2019 head coach in the Clash of the Carolinas All-Star Match against North Carolina. And he was the South co-boys’ coach in this state’s 2007 North-South All-Star match.
The Knights’ coach has also been regional coach of the year 20 times and won 35 regional titles. His program has made eight state quarterfinal appearances.
Andrews’ career record is 620-15. Only River Bluff boys’ soccer coach Phil Savitz has more wins in the state with more than 700.
“Billy Andrews has set a standard of excellence in our athletic program that will never be matched,” said Greg Johnson, West athletic director. “For nearly half a century, Coach Andrews has produced husbands, fathers, leaders, and stellar representatives of Florence. He has also won a few games along the way.”
The connection with players is what keeps Andrews on the sideline.
“I love the boys that I coach,” said Andrews, who has twice been named Sneed Middle School teacher of the year. “I hear from them every day. I enjoy the competition with the other schools; I enjoy winning and losing. I don’t enjoy losing, but you get a lot of solace out of losing. You learn a lot from losing.”
One can tell Andrews has long loved this sport.
“Soccer means I have done something that people will remember,” Andrews said. “My name will be synonymous with soccer. I’ve helped people and helped guide young men to a better place.”
As a student at Wilson, where Andrews graduated in 1970, his favorite sport was baseball — on a team on which his best pitch was a fastball.
“How fast was my fastball?” I don’t know,” Andrews once said, laughing. “They didn’t clock us back then. We’re talking about the 1960s and ’70s.”
While attending North Carolina A&T, Andrews took an interest in soccer while playing on a club team and majoring in history and political science.
“I didn’t play soccer much growing up,” he said. “We’d just play it in the yard every now and then.”
Upon his college graduation, Andrews taught preschool for a year in New Jersey. He then worked just across that state line in 1976 as a tour guide at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park. He even worked as a tour guide there on the country’s 1976 bicentennial, July 4.
“I would give tours of the Second Bank of the United States, Independence Hall and the Bishop White House, places like that around the park,” Andrews said. “That was something fun for me, since I majored in history.”
After returning to Florence in ’77, Andrews began working at the local YMCA and helped establish its youth soccer program. Andrews already had his teaching certificate. Since Andrews was already working in the school district, and he had experience coaching soccer, West named him soccer coach of his first boys’ 1978 team — a year after playing as a club.
There were no early growing pains, as the Knights’ first season was a winning one.
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