Courage Truly Is Grace Under Pressure

As an athlete at Randolph-Macon Academy and later at Randolph-Macon College and as a varsity football and baseball coach at Collegiate for most of the 43 years he spent on North Mooreland Road, Charlie McFall got some good calls, bad calls, good breaks, and bad ones, but he never complained. Instead, he just sucked it up, smiled, and moved on to the next play, the next game, the next season.

 

What’s the adage? Sports don’t build character. They reveal it.

 

That was Charlie McFall. Unflappable in an emotional arena. Accomplished but deferential to those around him. Competitive — and, man, was he competitive — but unwaveringly sportsmanlike.

 

During those 43 years, 26 of which he served as Athletic Director, he expected his athletes and coaches to be humble in victory and gracious in defeat, to take the shots, get back up and move forward the best they could, and never, ever make excuses.

 

It’s not about what’s fair or unfair, he preached. It’s how you deal with the challenges thrown your way.

 

Charlie taught us to compete in athletics. He also taught us how to compete in life, and as his health declined over the past couple of years and he slipped peacefully away just after daybreak on Sept. 21, he taught us not so much through words as though actions that courage truly is grace under pressure.

 

During Charlie’s 21 years as head varsity football coach, his teams amassed a record of 127-66-1 and won four VISAA and five Prep League championships. In 19 years, his baseball teams won one VISAA and five Prep League titles.

 

McFall Hall, a cafeteria and multipurpose building on Collegiate’s North Mooreland Road campus, was named in his honor in 2013.

 

He was inducted into Collegiate’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014, a recognition he characterized in an interview some years later with a sheepish grin and the words, “They were hard up.”

 

That, too, was Charlie McFall, a model of humility who embodied all that is good in high school athletics and preferred always to deflect the credit rather than bask in the glory of his many achievements.

 

As a coach, he was a skilled tactician and strategist who could see 22 players simultaneously in motion and could put athletes, often undersized and less talented than their opponents, in positions to succeed.

 

As Athletic Director, he had a gift for coaching the coaches and expected them to do right by the young men and women entrusted to their care.

 

As a representative of Collegiate, he was a goodwill ambassador who earned the universal respect of opponents and game officials as well as those who wore the Green and Gold.

 

As a friend, he was steadfast in his support and valued loyalty as the greatest of virtues.

 

Years ago, when he served as a counselor at Camp Virginia, he shared with an assemblage of youngsters the story of getting his truck stuck in the mud on a country road while on a hunting trip and calling a friend who lived quite a distance away to come help him out.

 

What a great example of selfless service and loyalty that is, he told the campers. What he neglected to mention was that it was he who had received the phone call and without hesitation made the long drive to aid his friend.

 

That, in the noblest sense, was Charlie McFall.

 

As we honor Charlie, acknowledge his impact, and celebrate his purposeful life, let us hear a compendium of remembrances and reflections of many who shared life’s journey with him.