Ultimate Success Story: Former Eunice, Opelousas track coach Charles Mahfouz remembered for memorable track career
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
Former Eunice High football coach Paul Trosclair said there wasn’t anything passive about the way Charles Mahfouz coached the team’s offensive line during their time together.
Although Mahfouz would later establish impeccable credentials as the school’s track coach, leading the Bobcats to three consecutive state championships, Trosclair recalled the inner fire that drove Mahfouz to success.
“There was no time on the field where he was laughing and cutting up; he was pretty serious,” said Trosclair, then the offensive coordinator under head coach Johnny Bourque. “When it was time to go to work, Charlie was an intense guy, which I thought was great.”
Mahfouz enjoyed an 18-year coaching career at the high school level that produced six state championships in track and field at Eunice and Opelousas High Schools. He also led his teams to 13 St. Landry Parish titles with 10 district and 9 regional crowns.
Mahfouz, also the head coach at UL-Lafayette for two years, was remembered for his passion for coaching track and overall coaching abilities, as the 72-year-old passed away Monday from complications following a heart attack in Florida.
Services are pending but are expected to take place in two weeks, family friend and former Carencro High football coach Tony Courville said.
“He fought,” said Larry Dauterive, who hired Mahfouz to coach at Opelousas in 1993. “There was a lot wrong (medically) with him. He was a fighter.”
UL-Lafayette track and field coach Tommy Badon, a longtime friend of Mahfouz, said the former coach was in Destin, Florida, with his wife Julie to attend the dance recital of one of their granddaughters.
He said that Mahfouz’s blood pressure spiked during the event.
“They say he coded (heart stoppage) on the way to the hospital,” he said. “They revived him and rushed him to Pensacola. He coded on the way there, and they revived him. They were able to stabilize his heart there, but he had internal issues, and they discovered through a biopsy that he had colon cancer.”
Mahfouz was placed on dialysis and in hospice care for several weeks until his passing, Courville said.
“He could chew out those guys pretty good,” said Trosclair, who won 207 of his 246 career games at Eunice. “He went hard. Most of the kids, when they get away from you, appreciate that. They may not appreciate that at the time, but he was pushing people hard, and that’s why he was successful. When his offensive lineman made a mistake, they heard about it loud and clear.”
Charles Mahfouz graduated from Opelousas High and then from USL in 1975.
Mahfouz was the direct descendant of Louisiana High School coaching royalty: nephew of Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductee Faize Mahfouz and son of Payne Mahfouz, a head football coach at Opelousas High.
With coaching blood pumping through his veins, Charles Mahfouz embarked on a coaching career that lasted four decades, with 18 of those taking place in St. Landry Parish – nine each at Eunice and Opelousas.
The Bobcats were the district and parish champions four times, regional champs three times before breaking through in 1990 with the first of three consecutive state crowns.
Led by state composite 110-meter hurdle champion Ubeja Anderson, Eunice’s dynasty also featured such individual standouts as Tommy Fay, who was also a 110-meter hurdle champion and four-year letterman with the Ragin’ Cajuns.
Anderson’s time of 13.73 seconds in 1982 remains the state’s composite record in the event. He also won the national 55-meter indoor hurdles championship.
“He had them going,” Trosclair said of Mahfouz. “We had some guys who competed really hard. He also had some super athletes. He also had some guys that were above-average athletes that busted their butts to win state championships. He got the most out of his people.
“Eunice is a baseball town,” Trosclair said. Most of the kids there are playing baseball when they’re very young. He made something special. Everyone knows people enjoy a winner, and that’s exactly what he built, a winning program, and people appreciated it.”
Once Dauterive returned to Louisiana from coaching in the Canadian Football League, he wanted to hire Mahfouz to serve as his track coach.
Because of his admiration for Faize Mahfouz and the role he played in his own coaching career, Dauterive was always drawn to Charles Mahfouz, who delivered during his time at Opelousas High.
“I needed some help at Opelousas and brought him over, and he was hard on them,” Dauterive said. “He went the extra mile for me.”
Opelousas was the state’s runner-up in Mahfouz’s first season in 1993. The Tigers captured nine parish titles, six district and five regional crowns, and state titles in 1998-1999-2000.
During that span, Mahfouz coached Devery Henderson, who went on to star at LSU and with the New Orleans Saints at wide receiver.
“Charlie never gave himself enough credit for how good of a coach he was,” Badon said. “He really didn’t.”
Dauterive recalled one particular football game in 1993 where Mahfouz’s ingenuity paid dividends in the Tigers’ victory over Abbeville.
With a bleak forecast of rain and cold, it was Mahfouz who encouraged Dauterive not to relent from his pass-happy offensive game plan and attack the Wildcats, who were unable to slow down quarterback Sam George, who threw for five touchdowns.
“We used 300 towels and 36 new footballs,” he said. “You couldn’t see the lines, it was raining too hard. Charlie had duffle bags to keep the balls dry the whole night. He told me to keep throwing it because they couldn’t cover. He said he’d keep them (footballs) dry. I always attribute that victory to Charlie.”
Badon, who was in college at the USL, had an eye on a rich Acadiana area track landscape that included several successful coaches such as Mahfouz.
The area was fortunate to have impactful coaches as Charles Lancon of Lafayette High, James Simmons of Crowley, Eddie Sorrell of New Iberia, and Albert Perry at Franklin, with Lancon, Simmons, Perry, and Sorrell all earning Lifetime Achievement awards from the Louisiana Track and Field Coaches Association.
Pat Arceneaux of Breaux Bridge was another member of that coaching fraternity that followed a coaching path to USL like Lancon, Mahfouz, and Badon.
“Those were all (Mahfouz’s) peers and competed against each other,” Badon said. “Those were guys I looked up to. They were the guys you wanted to be like. They were consistent winners with state champions. Those are the kind of programs you want to build.”
Mahfouz joined the staff of the Ragin’ Cajuns as a volunteer assistant for two years before taking over the program as head coach for two years in 2009.
“He held people accountable,” Trosclair said. “A lot of people may take a relaxed approach to track, but Charlie was not that way. He expected them to be at practice and expected them to run hard. When they went to a track meet on Friday, they were well prepared.”
Mahfouz, the Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year in ’09, moved into volunteer roles at both Teurlings Catholic and Westminster Christian Academy before retiring.
He served under Badon at Westminster, where the Lady Crusaders were the state runner-up in 2014 and state champion a year later.
“He was someone who could get the most out of kids,” Badon said. “He was just good; he had that knack. They knew he cared. He was tough on them, but he loved them.
“He was able to get a lot out of the kids, probably because they knew he cared,” Badon said. “He wanted them to be good. He went out of his way a lot of the times to do things for them, get to know their families.”
When Courville moved to Opelousas as head coach and athletic director, he crossed paths with Mahfouz, who led the Tigers to the first of three straight state track titles in ’98.
“He was a very knowledgeable person across the board,” he said. “He was an excellent football coach. I knew his passion was in track and field. He had a unique way with the kids. He was highly respected by them. They knew he had their best interest at heart. They would run through a wall for him.”
Mahfouz’s love for teaching didn’t know any bounds, often spilling to the next promising athlete he came across. It became common for Opelousas Catholic to practice at Opelousas, where Mahfouz was willing to convey his wisdom.
“He didn’t mind sharing his knowledge; he’d work with anybody,” Courville said. “Kids from other schools came to work with him, and he helped them out. He was very passionate about the sport.”
Even in retirement, Mahfouz wasn’t above seeking advice from others on certain areas of track.
With a grandson running sprints at Jesuit High in New Orleans, Mahfouz reached out to Badon for his opinion on how to best run the curve in the 200-meter dash.
“He was a humble guy,” Badon said. “He actually called me for advice to ask about his grandson and how to coach the turn in the 200. He was confident but wanted to make sure he was doing the right thing for the kids.”
Badon said Mahfouz and his wife had transitioned into becoming “professional grandparents”. They were the biggest fans of their grandson and were regulars at his track meets for the Blue Jays.
“We saw him this spring and he was so excited,” Badon said of Mahfouz.
One of Mahfouz’s two daughters lives in Destin, leading to the perfect routine for the couple to try and visit on a monthly basis, to see their granddaughter, which was the case in their most recent visit.
“It was a pretty good time of his life,” Badon said.
Trosclair believed the success Mahfouz enjoyed was the result of his own diligence, evolving from a novice on the sport with his own principles and philosophies.
“He became good and learned it,” he said. “He was successful and just kept building. He was a big-time track coach. That’s what he was.”
Dauterive compared his own careful approach to coaching to that which Mahfouz preferred. He was very detail-oriented with an ability to connect to athletes willing to go the extra mile.
“He coached track like I coached football, which was meticulous,” he said. “He was to the point, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. It was preparation.”
Badon didn’t hesitate when a list of some Acadiana area track coaching pioneers was rattled off. He knew Mahfouz belonged right beside all of them.
“He’s definitely one of the best high school coaches in south Louisiana in the last 40 years,” he said. “When you go to more than one school and win it at more than one school, it’s not an accident. He fits in with the better track coaches.”