‘He was one of a kind’: Coach Nolan Gill remembered for compassion, competitiveness
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
Over the course of their 30-plus years as friends and colleagues, David Prescott discovered something about Nolan Gill that put everything he experienced with the long-time coach into perspective.
Prescott, who coached for 44 years in the Baton Rouge area, went to say his final goodbyes to Gill on Monday when he struck up a conversation with Gill’s wife, Kathi.
Gill, a father of sons Brandon and Byron and grandfather of four, was first diagnosed with dementia in 2013 and, despite the ebbs and flows of the debilitating mental illness, maintained the same grit and determination he’d displayed during his playing and coaching career.
“She said he was 61 years old when he got this,” Prescott said. “He just fought it so hard. What a fighter. That’s almost unheard of to battle this for 13 years.”
Gill, 74, finally lost his battle with dementia on Tuesday, resulting in an outpouring of tributes and heartfelt accounts from former players and coaches, and a legion of ardent fans from Glen Oaks High, where he spent a total of 25 of his 33 years in coaching.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
“Coach Gill had discipline and gave us structure,” said Madison Prep football coach Landry Williams, a Class 4A All-State wide receiver for Gill in 1990. “He was a weight room guy. He put the team first, held guys accountable, and wanted us to be great men in life. To have good character. He was like Pops.”
Gill was a 1970 graduate of Glen Oaks, where he was a multi-sport athlete. He went to Southeastern Louisiana and earned All-Gulf South Conference honors at tight end, while also playing defensive end and was the team’s punter.
Gill earned the distinction of being voted team captain in his senior season in 1974.
“I tell people all of the time, he was the nicest, toughest guy I’ve ever met in my life,” Prescott said. “He would literally take your head off between the lines, but outside of that, he was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He brought that to the kids. They were always well behaved, but when it came time to play, they were ready to take you on.”
Gill went back to his alma mater as an assistant coach in 1983 and was elevated to head coach and athletic director in 1987, where he served until 1999. He guided the Panthers to a pair of state semifinals and finished his coaching career at Denham Springs High (2000-2004) and retired in 2008.
Glen Oaks bestowed the honor of naming its new fieldhouse in Nolan Gill’s honor during a ceremony Sept. 22, 2023.
“I wasn’t going to miss that,” Williams said. “His health was declining during that time, but he still recognized some of the guys. Everybody showed him love. It was nice. It was a very exciting time.”
Prescott’s path crossed with Gill during their time at Tara High in the mid-1980s.
Prescott was the boys’ basketball coach and handled the defensive backs in football, while Gill was the Trojans’ defensive coordinator.
“That’s where we started our friendship,” Prescott said. “He was a great coordinator, one of the best men I’ve ever met in my life.”
Prescott still marvels at the feat Gill engineered in 1984, building a defense that recorded eight consecutive shutouts for an 8-0 start. However, the Trojans dropped their final two games, 7-0 and 3-0, and didn’t make the playoffs, which only took the district’s top two teams.
“I know I’ll never see it again,” Prescott said of the eight-game scoreless streak. “It was a simple thing with Nolan. He would say, ‘We’re going to be tougher than you are. We’re going to hit you before you hit us.’”
Prescott left to become the head football coach at Live Oak, and Gill departed for Glen Oaks.
When Prescott arrived as head coach at Central High, his teams faced Glen Oaks, where Gill had become the head coach in ’87. They would also oppose each other when Prescott was the head coach at Tara and Gill at Denham Springs.
“We’ve been friends for 30 years or more,” Prescott said. “He was a player’s coach. They absolutely loved him, just like I did. We had (coaching) staffs of five people back then, and we were both working on defense. He used to tell me, ‘We’re going to get them before they get us.’ I carried that on throughout my whole career, about being so aggressive. Looking back at his playing career at Glen Oaks and at Southeastern, that’s who he was.”
Glen Oaks needed a lot of love and tender care, and Gill was the right man to also offer a swift kick.
“We had some rough years; people made jokes about us being the pink panthers and the 49ers when we lost 49-0,” Williams said. “Coach Gill wasn’t going to play with you on the discipline thing. He treated us like his kids and the guys developed respect for that.”
Gill was able to get Glen Oaks up and running by the time Williams was a senior in ’90. The Panthers went 7-3 but finished outside of the playoffs because of their district finish.
Better days were certainly on the horizon.
“I was tired of losing; that was the way I felt,” Williams said. “We had a lot of other guys that felt the same way. We said there would be no more of this and started talking a lot of pride in what we were doing.”
Gill established camaraderie by taking his teams away to camps in preparation for a new season, Williams said. Players saw how much Gill and his staff of Brian Ensminger, Mike Roach and Frank Pierce truly cared right down to the way they dressed.
The Panthers began to take on the look of a winner where during the stretch between 1990-96, they averaged eight wins (57-22), won four district championships, advanced to the state playoffs six times – highlighted by a pair of semifinal showings.
Before Gill’s arrival, Glen Oaks had only been to the playoffs three times in school history.
Glen Oaks finished 11-1 in ’92, losing to eventual Class 5A state champion Carencro, 32-28, in a semifinal. The Bears were led by eventual LSU standout running back Kevin Faulk, who went on to win three Super Bowls with the New England Patriots.
“No. 1, he was just a great competitor,” said Prescott, who served as principal at both Central and Central Private and is the co-athletic director at Live Oak. “No. 2, he had no fear of anybody. There were big games, whether we coached together or against one another. I would tell my teams not to expect them to back down, and we were in for a fight. That’s just who he is. He was really one of a kind.”
Gill’s time at Glen Oaks coincided with a talented group of incoming players, some of whom would play in the NFL, which were integral to the program’s growth.
Eric Randall was the first of a trio of quarterbacks – along with Ted White and his brother Marcus – to not only help position Glen Oaks for success but lay a foundation Gill turned into a successful run.
“We said there would be no more of this (losing) and we started to take a lot of pride in what we were doing,” said Williams, who enters his 10th season as head coach at Madison Prep Academy, where he led the Chargers to the 2020 Class 3A state championship.
“The guys in our era saw that he was a family guy,” Williams said of Gill. “He pushed us to have fun, be respectful. He held us accountable. Guys like him and (basketball) coach (Harvey) Adger left a mark.”
Eric Randall, now in his fourth year as principal at Glen Oaks, helped Southern to a pair of Southwestern Athletic Conference Championships from 1992-95. He’s also been inducted into the school’s sports hall of fame.
White became the career leading passer at Howard University, where he’s in his first year as head coach, and also the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference with 9,908 yards and 92 touchdowns. He was the MEAC’s Player of the Year in 1996 and twice earned All-America honors.
White spent five seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars, played with the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and in NFL Europe and the Canadian Football League.
His coaching resume included stops as the interim head coach at Arkansas Pine Bluff, offensive assistant at Maryland, quarterbacks coach at UCLA, and quarterbacks coach with the Houston Texans.
Marcus Randall is the author of one of the most iconic plays in LSU football history, throwing a 75-yard TD pass to Devery Henderson on the final play for a 33-30 victory over Kentucky, a game coined ‘The Bluegrass Miracle’ in 2002. He was a member of the Tigers’ 2003 national championship team under coach Nick Saban and has been a head coach in the Baton Rouge area at Southern Lab and Woodlawn during his career.
Randall went undrafted by the NFL and spent time with both the Tennessee Titans and on the practice squad of the Green Bay Packers.
The Northern brothers – Gabe and Heishma – were defensive pillars under Gill.
Gabe, a two-time All-SEC selection and second round NFL pick of the Buffalo Bills, had a total of 58 catches for 1,018 yards and 11 TDs as a tight end for Gill. He distinguished himself as a premier pass-rushing linebacker/defensive end at LSU and later with the Bills and Minnesota Vikings. He also coached the defensive line at Prairie View and Grambling State.
Heishma, who returned to coach under Gill at Glen Oaks in 1996-97, also coached in college at Grambling, Texas Southern, Morehouse and Texas Southern and was the head coach at Prairie View (2011-14).
“A good group of kids that came along at the right time and were a perfect match,” Williams said.
His players always played hard for Gill, Prescott felt.
“They had great players, and they also had a great coach,” he said. “Everywhere he’s ever been, the kids just loved him to death. He just had that knack to get kids to play hard for him. They just gravitated to him. I knew whenever I played against him, it was going to be a war. That’s just how he was, and that’s how his teams played.”
Gill had a penchant for recovery, rallying from an emergency craniotomy for a brain bleed, resulting in a two-to-three-week stay in a Baton Rouge rehabilitation hospital.
Gill funneled his passion for defense into the players he coached, choosing to be the one that applied the blow instead of absorbing it.
“He was always the one that liked to do the hitting than getting hit,” Prescott said.
Golf was another passion Gill enjoyed, and it became a source of recreation that he and Prescott enjoyed. Even after retirement, with his body not always at its best, Gill found time for golf with his friend.
“All of these years we’ve been together, I’ve never beat him in golf,” he said. “He was one of a kind.”
Prescott said it was commonplace for coaches to find summer employment for additional income. That led to painting homes over a 15-20-year span for the two friends.
“He was a wonderful, wonderful friend,” he said.
With his friend’s health in peril, Prescott was always willing to provide transportation for Gill to the golf course where he lived in Denham Springs.
“I always felt indebted to Nolan because he taught me so much and he was such a great friend,” he said. “We used to have get-togethers for coaches in Ascension Parish. We were all great friends although we were opponents. I took him to play because I just wanted to be around him because he was so good. He was so caring.”
Glen Oaks began paying homage to both Gill and long-time athletic trainer Jerry Bush with a golf tournament in their names to generate money for programs at the school. This year’s event, the 10th annual, was held at Copper Mill Golf Club in Zachary, which kicked off a weekend for the Glen Oaks Alumni Picnic.
Denham Springs, where he finished his coaching career, offered a fitting commendation of Gill on the football program’s Facebook page.
“The impact he had on players, and the many lives he touched throughout his 30-year-plus career, will not be forgotten.”