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Jeff Venable shared this tribute to Coach Dale Berry.
I was heartbroken to hear the news about a the passing of Coach Berry. Coach Berry loved his Cougars and we loved him! His voice still echoes fond memories of my youthful adventures as a Cougar in the late 90’s. I was in the
class of 97. He was our defensive coach and we were fierce. Ready to perform for him and Coach Moore when the lights turned on on Friday Nights. He like so many others instilled a desire to help your teammates win and the belief and confidence in our ability to succeed in everything each game due to the drills and work ethic he taught and inspired in my brothers. When we worked hard on the field Coach Berry took note and shared it with others he knew were
Important to you. He told my parents time and again how great a player I was. One of my precious memories was coming home for a visit and had the opportunity to me my oldest son Tucker at the time who was in elementary school tell him how great a football player his dad was and went on to share what he loved about me. That touched that was a special day for me. Coach Berry has a very big voice and he loved to use it especially with cougar D.
His voice was loud, piercing and alarming every one on the line, defense and entire team and as a coach he loved telling you, you were good but when you were wrong he really loved to tell everyone who would listen.
It was only in the challenge to make us better.
Then he would admittedly tell you to get you junk together. Especially if he didn’t his d-line was pulling their weight around practice to the sandpit we’d go!! That was where we spent most of our time getting our selves “right”. His voice echoed off the red clay hill and back into our helmets on the back side of the sandpit pushing an old nasty metal sled with pads on it from the 70s sure to be covered in all sorts of things requiring tetanus shots to heal . The sled that he “Coach” absolutely loved to ride sometimes with visitors where Ryan, Kyle, Bo, Matt, Breck, John, and Myself and others who deeply loved and to show us how much he appreciated us he let us to push him around on that stupid sled almost like Santa calling the names of each reindeer he called each out our names and lovingly told us we weren’t doing it right. We’d get in sync and get his blessing just to get back in the line and do it again. I’m not sure if it’s still there but if you’re sitting on the home side 50 yard line it was behind the right side of the visitors football stand, to the left clay hill. There was none of this heat advisory get a pass we had hard core 2 a days and they had us ready to roll. We were nothing to nobody but they helped put championship caliber teams together year after year and I was so glad to get my name called some days I like to mess up just so Coach Berry would mess with me a little bit more. Here are a few pics from the reunion we had back in 2019. I didn’t want to let Coach Berry have all the fun but sometimes Coach Moore and Coach Berry loved to run the weekends out of us. Coach Berry’s Cougars will miss him!! There will never be another like him but so thankful he made time for me and my brothers! He’s one of the many who’s helped make me and so many others great!! In Loving Memory – FISH
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Jeff, this is Coach Berry’s oldest daughter, Heather. Thank you so much for this tribute. It brings me back to the days when Dad would invite his players over to our house in Old Magee to watch football film. I was around 11 or 12 at the time and I have a fond memory of the players going out in the front yard to play frisbee. I still remember that it was Larkin Honea who taught me the proper way to throw a frisbee. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks and I know my Dad loved coaching you guys! He was so proud of his Cougars!