Covington High School's Coach Greg Salter

Once a Lion

A Covington Football Legacy

By Mimi Greenwood Knight

As a boy growing up in Covington, Greg Salter had no idea his grandfather was “kind of a big deal”. To him, Jack Salter wasn’t the winningest coach in Covington High School football history, an inductee into the High School Football Hall of Fame. He was just Grandpa. “I’d tag along with him on the weekend, as he washed uniforms in the fieldhouse and worked on scouting reports,” the younger Salter said. “And sometimes he’d take me to practices. Those high school players were like the Saints to me.”

His grandfather even surprised him by showing up to his tenth birthday party with a few star players in tow. “It might as well have been Bobby Hebert or Archie Manning,” Salter said. “I was also the worst ballboy ever. I don’t think I ever brought a ball onto the field. I just wanted to be on the sidelines with the team and with my grandpa.”

To the rest of the Northshore, Jack Salter was the once-in-a-lifetime coach who took his 1976 team to a state championship, landed Covington High in the runner-up position three times, won 15 district titles, and 250 football games. But for Greg, the penny didn’t drop until he was on the team himself.

“I started to realize what a big deal he was when I’d overhear other coaches talk about him,” he said. “I saw how coaches from opposing teams wanted to pick his brain and talk strategy with him. His last year was my senior year and, each time we played a game on the road, the other school held ceremonies for him and organized tributes.” He also saw how former players returned to show “Coach” pictures of their children or invited him to their weddings. Then in 2001, the Covington High football stadium, which had always been known as The Cow Palace, was renamed Jack Salter Stadium.

With such a formidable role model, how could Greg not try his hand at coaching? “I actually started working for the Covington Recreation Department when I was 13,” Salter said. “Then, I coached at Fontainebleau Junior High while I was still at Southeastern.” After graduation, he accepted a coaching position at Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell.

Then in 2001, he landed an assistant coaching position at his alma mater and hung in there for twelve years before being named Covington High School’s head football coach in 2013, a year the Lions were one game away from the state finals in the Super Dome.

“It had been 12 or 13 years since we’d won a playoff game,” Salter said. “It was total beginner’s luck. But it gave me a taste for the way I remember Covington football, when I was a kid, when the whole town rallied around the team.”

In his first year as head coach, as the Covington High Lions advanced toward the finals, home games in Jack Salter Stadium were standing room only. The team won the all-important game against crosstown rival, St. Paul’s, taking home the coveted “Little Brown Jug”, for the first time in years.

Downtown Covington businesses painted their windows with blue and gold slogans celebrating their hometown team. And a week before the big game, Salter walked into his usual barbershop, only to have everyone inside launch into the Covington High fight song. “It was like stepping back into the Covington of my childhood,” he said.

Before that final playoff game, the elder Salter arranged a surprise for his grandson. He got word out to former CHS players to show up outside the fieldhouse. When the team ran onto the field that night it was through a tunnel of over 200 former Lion players, some who’d played as far back as the 60s and 70s and others who’d just graduated.

“That single moment will stay with me forever,” Salter said. “I thought, ‘They may fire me tomorrow, but I’ll take that moment with me.’ Jack had set the bar so high and cast such a long shadow. But that night showed me it could be done again.”

In the end, the Lions lost their shot at the state championship game by one point in the final seconds of the game. “My grandpa said, ‘Games like that you always have regret. What’s your regret?’ and he talked me through the disappointment,” Salter said.

Jack Salter attended every game his grandson coached, but he always sat discretely in the end zone, not wanting to distract from the players and the game. “He’d sit in his car and watch practices,” Salter said. “ I’d tell him, ‘You know you can come on the field.’ And he’d say, ‘I’m just a fan now.’

“But I was able to bend his ear about anything and everything that came up,” Salter said. “He’d experienced it all. The first piece of advice he gave me was to learn every kid’s first name and to make sure they know I see them as individuals, not just what they can contribute to the game. He told me to always make time for the media and, when you have years when things aren’t going your way, they’ll cut you some slack. But the main thing he taught me was to treat every child the way I’d want someone to treat my child.”

The biggest surprise for the younger Salter is how little of his job is actually about coaching football. “My job is to manage the coaches while they handle the football stuff,” he said. “My main job is to be there for the kids and the things they’re going through. You wouldn’t believe what some kids go through.”

“A lot of kids today don’t know how to fail,” he said. “I don’t want to lose a game ever, but there are things we can learn when we lose. I hope I can teach kids to respect the officials and respect their opponent. I hope we’re preparing them not just to play football but to live in the real world.”

Salter has had some phenomenal years since taking over as head coach. In 2017, his Covington High Lions were undefeated in the regular season for the first time since 1988 going 12 and 0. Last year, they were 9 and 3. “There are years when we don’t meet our potential and that’s frustrating,” he said. “But every year is fun because every year is different. This year for instance, we’ve lost some good leaders. So, we’re waiting to see who will step up. We have a lot of talent. This is a team that can go up against anyone.”

Salter is coaching sons of his former players now and sons of his former teammates. “Five or six of the guys on the staff were players I coached,” he said. “My skin had to get tough pretty fast in this job. You’re never going to be able to please everybody. But my grandpa taught me just keep doing what you think is right and hopefully it will be most of the time.”

Legendary coach, Jack Salter, passed away in 2017 at the age of 86. During his 33 years as Covington High football coach, he impacted hundreds of lives and left his grandson some big shoes to fill. Fill them he has. And he says he’ll keep on coaching until he can’t anymore.

“In this job, you’re expected to put a successful product on the field,” Salter said. “But my ‘scoreboard’ is in ten years when my players come back to me like they did to my grandpa. When I get on Facebook and see where this boy got his dream job or this kid is an awesome father, those are my wins and losses. Those are the ones that matter anyway.”