Richard Prince, a longtime Myers Park track and cross country coach and longtime national, state and local track and cross country official, passed away last night. He was 83.
He was inducted into the North Carolina High School Track & Field and Cross Country Hall of Fame in 2020 and the NCHSAA Hall of Fame in 2025. I was in attendance at both ceremonies, the first because I was helping with the presentation, and the second because my family and I wanted to be there, supporting a man who had done so much for me, but also for so many over a long period of time.
When Prince took over for legendary Myers Park coach Stuart Allen in 1971, he did so thinking it would be for a few years. But he stayed and had Allen's backing.
"I felt like he was a good person to come in at Myers Park," Allen told me when I wrote Prince's retirement story for The Charlotte Observer in 1998. "He was a great track man and that was a great track school. It's always difficult coming into a program that has been successful, because you always feel you won't do as well. I think anybody who follows Prince will have that in mind."
I grew up knowing who he was because his presence seemed bigger than life - I was in high school watching a friend run at a track meet when I first saw him. His thundering voice could be heard across the field, and he always seemed to be with his best friend, Larry McAfee, another legendary coach, who was at rival East Mecklenburg.
Two close friends and state championship coaches at rival schools, who both catapulted cross country and track and field to heights not seen in North Carolina prior to their involvement, which started in the 1970s.
"I think we get along very well together," McAfee told Charlotte Observer reporter, Jim Utter, in 1998, when the newspaper wrote a story about their friendship. "We may disagree sometimes, but I think both of us know that whatever we may do or say, it is always in the best interest of the sport. It couldn't be any other way."
Together, they transformed cross country in this state, taking a one-day, all-class state meet that had barely any spectators, to a multi-weekend state meet with crowds flooding McAlpine Park in Charlotte, where the state championships were held from 1980 until 2001, growing from an all-class state meet to four classes because of the growth of the sport - and much of it because Prince and McAfee spearheaded efforts to grow the sport.
Prince also championed the inclusion of girls into track and field meets in North Carolina, at a time when very little was being done to promote girls' track in the state, and when other meets didn't include them. In 1975, he added two girls' events to the historic Queen City Relays, the oldest track meet in North Carolina after being founded in 1946, and then he added a full girls' schedule to the meet in 1976. No other meets were doing that at the time.
Along with McAfee, they led the charge for the first girls' state cross country championship in 1980, and Prince also served with McAfee to help build the Wendy's Cross Country Invitational (initially the Coaches Invitational) as well as the Kinney Championships (later Foot Locker and now Brooks South) into two of the largest and most prestigious meets, not only in North Carolina but in the South.
And this came at a time when chip timing wasn't used, and McAfee and Prince did everything by hand (mailing out entries, keying in entries, using pull tags and stop watches to time meets, cross country and track).
No one else was hosting large invitationals in the 1970s when the started doing it, mainly because it was too hard to pull together - but both of them did it because they saw a need, they loved the sport and they saw the opportunity the sport gave kids.
Prince and McAfee also served as Regional, Sectional and conference cross country and track meet directors, usually side-by-side, and always with the thought that it would help the sport and the kids the sport served.
And both were longtime officials, not just locally, but statewide and nationally, with Prince even serving as an official at the prestigious Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway.
In 1995, Prince encouraged me, when I coached with him at Myers Park, to restart the Mecklenburg County Track & Field Honor Roll, which listed the top 10 boys and girls in the county in each event in the Charlotte Observer, and at a time when I had to rely on a fax machine for results, and I had to type in every result. But he wanted to see kids get recognized, and he knew I loved the sport, so he asked me to inquire about it. I did, The Observer said, yes, and that started something I did for more than 10 years, along with covering the sport for the paper, and later NCPrepTrack.com and DyeStat, while also writing a few stories, occasionally, for NCRunners and MileSplit.
He instigated all of that, stoking a love for the sport by merely suggesting something he could tell I enjoyed. He did that with countless others, too, encouraging them to do what he could tell they enjoyed. He had that way about him.
His encouragement birthed other things like me coaching again, researching lists, starting several foundations related to the sport, starting several cross country and track invitationals, as well as other things related to the sport. He lit the fire that sparked that.
Prince and McAfee also helped at my first track invitational, when I was nervous about hosting a large meet, and they both willingly volunteered at the Hare & Hounds Cross Country Invitational, another meet birthed out of me watching both of them for more than 15 years when I was writing for The Charlotte Observer and covered countless meets at McAlpine. I would watch them, talk to them, and sometimes I would even help with whatever they needed at the meets. They invited me to lunch after nearly every meet, generously paying for it, and each time I got to know them even better.
They were friends, not just to me, but to so many in the sport, who just enjoyed the sport, and that was a part of what helped me enjoy and love it, as well. They cared, and it was evident, volunteering numerous times to help me and so many others, when we needed and even when we didn't know to ask - often calling and asking how they could help, whether it was driving a gator to trail the last runner, sit at a minor or major part of the course to make sure runners didn't go the wrong way, or merely serving as an official who checked in runners.
A runner Prince coached at Piedmont High School, Ashley (Vaughn) Glover, had taken the head cross country coaching position at Wingate University, and he and McAfee volunteered to help her with hosting conference and regional meets and anything else she needed - just because. He wanted to help someone he coached, and for no other reason than because it helped her, the sport and kids. His and McAfee's care and concern wasn't just for the sport and kids at the high school level, but it was evident at the collegiate level, as well.
It was the simple offer to help, when they could have been running the meet themselves that meant the most to others.
Two giants in the sport, who were offering to serve and help. Humbleness by people like that has a way of sticking with you.
The high school cross country and track community lost one of those giants on Thursday night, and I wanted to try and convey how much he did to encourage, inspire, help and lead so many.
But I feel bad that my words are likely inadequate to show how much he helped so many others.
Richard Prince, a longtime Myers Park track and cross country coach and longtime national, state and local track and cross country official, passed away last night. He was 83.