Rodney Abernathy dedicated his career to Mount Holly youth sports and the fields where they played  

Rodney Abernathy’s nephew wanted to play football, so Abernathy gave the young boy rides to Mighty Mites practice. Abernathy knew the game, having played youth and high school ball, so he was asked to help coach. The following season, someone asked one day at Junior Midgets practice if he could fill in until the coach arrived.

“Well, the coach never showed up, so I became the coach,” Abernathy says. “To this day, I don’t know if there was a coach or if they were tricking me into being the coach. It may have been a trap to get me over there. But I loved it. Football is one of my favorite sports.”

Right place, right time.

“I thought I could go back and help the kids out and see them get to the next level,” he says. “It’s something I enjoy doing.”

Abernathy’s 20-plus years of commitment to helping youth succeed in sports – as a coach, a mentor or someone who just makes sure the field is in shape – has earned him the 2023 Community Spirit Award in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

When he learned of the award, he thought he was being tricked. Again.

“When I started playing football, my coach was Scotty Pope, and his son ended up playing for me at the Junior Midget level. And Coach Pope coached me at Junior Midgets. So he coached me and I coached his son, Justin,” Abernathy says. “That’s pretty cool.

“So Coach Pope calls me recently on a Saturday and said he was checking to see how I was doing, because I had some cancer going on, and he called to check, and I told him everything’s healing up real good. And he said, ‘I got one more thing I got to tell you. Your name has come up, and we voted you into the Sports Hall of Fame. We think highly of you.’ That was the one phone call I was not expecting to get.”

The date was April 1.

When they hung up, Abernathy told his wife, Themesa, “Wait, did he just April Fools me?”

They waited for Pope to call back.

He didn’t.

“So I’m guessing it was for real.”

Abernathy’s devotion to Mount Holly-area sports began shortly after his 1984 graduation from East Gaston High School, where he played football and baseball and ran track. In the early ‘90s, he says, the high school track coach contacted him about coaching Pop Warner ball. He coached Junior Midgets for 15 years.

He also was an assistant track coach at East Gaston for several years before going to Mount Holly Middle School as an assistant football coach, then back to East Gaston as a football assistant, all while coaching Pop Warner.

“We won a bunch of championships, and we won the Holly Bowl in McAdenville and a lot of different bowl games in Pop Warner,” he says. “They’re age 11 to 13 but I call them my older-lighter athletes. Like, they’re maybe 112 pounds or something, not the really big kids who play in the middle schools.”

But, again: Right place, right time.

And being present for young athletes.

“To see the kids advance, it’s just a dream come true. And to have the kids come back years later and thank me for helping them…,” he says. “You’re not going to make a lot of money at it, but you do it because you enjoy helping the kids.”

When the field behind Rankin Elementary needed updates in what was termed the Field of Dreams project, Abernathy immediately volunteered. “A lot of people in the community were involved with it. I just asked what they needed help with,” he says. “I just did whatever was needed. We had to line the field, paint the field, we rebuilt the concessions stand, put up new lights on the football field, re-did the locker rooms and the press box, got new goal posts. It was a total remodel of the field.”

Right place, and the importance of showing up.

Away from sports, Abernathy works for Clarion in Mount Holly as a company firefighter. He will have been there 35 years in August and is a manager. He also sings in a local Gospel group, the Mount Holly QCs and has been a drummer since age 9.

He has four sons, ages 22 to 37, and has passed along his philosophy of helping others.

“Me and my wife, we’re home by ourselves now. They’ve moved out. The one thing I tried to tell my boys is, you can have whatever you want but you have to work for it,” he says, “and if you do that, it’ll work out great. Now, they are managers, supervisors, they go to work every day and are taking care of what they need.”

It has its rewards.

“I told Coach Pope this [the Hall of Fame] is something I never thought would happen to me. I did all the coaching and helping out because I wanted to make them better, and I’m like a father to some of them,” he says. “I told them, ‘You can call me day or night. Even when I’m not your coach, you can call me.’ And even today, they call on me. And parents, who say ‘I’m glad my son played for you.’ It means a lot. It really does. I did it for them. It’s all about what I can give back, and that’s what I’m here for.”