Swimming With the Sharks

I unfortunately never met Coach Pittman, but everyone I talked to admired the long time coach and teacher: 

Thomas W. “Pete” Pittman never stopped teaching, whether it was in the classroom or on the athletic field.

On May 30, former New Bern High School football coach Chip Williams had his last conversation with Pittman. His former assistant coach was undergoing treatment at a hospital, but was still giving Williams some words of advice.

One week later, on Friday, Pittman died, and New Bern lost a longtime educator, coach and friend.

“I had just taken the job at Scotland County, and Pete used to coach at Richmond County and that is a big rivalry,” Williams said. “Even though Pete was in pain, he was coaching me on how to beat Richmond County. He coached me up until the very last.”

Pittman is survived by his wife, Phyllis Willis, who is a teacher and former basketball and softball coach at New Bern; two sons, Charles and Thomas Pittman II; his brother Nathan Pittman and daughter-in-law, Marcia, of Fayetteville.

Pittman, who lived in River Bend, was an assistant football and track coach at New Bern, as well as a social studies and history teacher, from 1998 to 2006.

He attended St. Paul’s Catholic Church and enjoyed playing golf at River Bend Country Club.

“He was a great person who loved sports and loved working with kids,” said current New Bern football coach Bobby Curlings, who was an assistant football coach with Pittman. “He did a great job at it. I can’t say enough about him. He made us a lot better for being here.”

Pittman was a teacher and coach for 33 years. He coached at Seventy-First High School and Gray’s Creek in Cumberland County and at Richmond County and West Carteret schools.

He was an assistant coach at New Bern for three state championship games.

“He was a total part of the program, everything we were trying to put together -from taking kids home to running study halls to whatever it took to try and help the program,” Williams said. “New Bern has had a lot of success and he was a large part of it.”

While at New Bern, Pittman coached football under Williams and track under Mark Robison.

“All the kids really respected coach Pittman and what he could bring to athletics,” Robison said. “He was a great teacher. He could teach whatever needed to be taught to those kids. He was a well-rounded guy.”

Pittman coached the running backs and safeties for New Bern, touching the lives of hundreds of high school athletes.

He helped develop players such as University of Tennessee running back Montario Hardesty, Katawba College running back Kory Fisher, East Carolina safety Chris Mattocks and East Carolina tight end Davon Drew.

But it was not just his influence on the track or the football field that made Pittman so well liked.

“Coach Pittman was big part of my life, especially through high school, that was my friend,” said Hardesty, a junior at Tennessee. “He really bought into my football career as a coach and as a person. I was in his class and he was pretty much a mentor in my life.”

When reminiscing about Pittman’s influence on his life, two stories come to Hardesty’s mind.

Pittman never called Mattocks, a former New Bern safety, by his name. He was always “Mad Dog.”

Pittman was also a fan of former Florida State running back Greg Jones and his aggressive running style.

“When someone ran someone over on the football field, he always called it ‘Jonesing’ somebody and I still say that today,” Hardesty said.

Former New Bern assistant coach Beau Williams, who coached with Pittman for six years, also recalled a fond memory on Saturday.

“One day we were doing safety drills and our quarterback Davon Drew threw a ball over the cornerback’s head and one of the guys took out Pittman,” Williams said. “His little Stetson hat went up flying and then he got up about ready to kill somebody. There are a bunch of them, but some of them I can’t put in the paper.”

Drew, a 2004 graduate of New Bern, played quarterback for the Bears, piling up a career record of 30-3. He credits a lot of his success to Pittman.

“He helped me learn the offense and making reads,” Drew said. “We had a good relationship because of track too. Coach Pittman had a good attitude toward people and helping them out and he was a good person.”

Pittman touched many people’s lives, but the main thing the longtime teacher cared about was his students and their education.

“When I go home he always asks me how I was doing and how my grades were,” Mattocks said. “That was his biggest concern with his being a history teacher. He always cared about our grades and getting that degree first.”