Neil Billingsley is on a streak - the first person in the Plainview High School Fieldhouse every morning since April 1, 1978. On that day 46 years ago, the rest of the coaching staff walked in on Billingsley, the newly hired offensive assistant, picking up trash from the equipment room and asked if he was the new custodian. 

Most days ‘Coach Bill’ arrives at 4:30 in the morning, although sometimes, he admits, it’s closer to 5 a.m. He starts by taking the laundry out, clipping every kid’s workout clothes to a strap and placing it in their locker. Then, he brews the coffee for the coaching staff and unlocks the facility for the football players driving in at 6:00 a.m.

Maybe those coaches were right about Billingsley all those years ago. He’s always behaved like a custodian, doing the jobs no one else thinks of, but which keep the program running smoothly. 

“I’ve put up maybe four or five (laundry) straps in the four years I’ve been here,” Plainview head coach Wyatt Martinez said. 

Technically, Billingsley retired in 1997. He just never stopped showing up to work. 

Billingsley isn’t here to psychoanalyze his service or why he does what he does. The 86-year-old claims he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if not for volunteering for the football program. He likes being the first coach players see in the locker room, asking them about their home life and schoolwork. 

But for the Plainview staff, Coach Bill is a living testament to why they became coaches, and an example to follow. 

“Not only will you not find somebody that can outwork him, you won’t find somebody that loves kids more than he does,” Martinez said.

Coach Bill loves the excitement of a win on Friday night, but he lives to put an arm around the Plainview players after a loss. After a 26-16 defeat to Hereford on Senior Night, no kid left the fieldhouse without talking to Coach Bill.

“You get out here in life, you’re going to find things that are not going to go right for you every day,” Billingsley said. “That’s the great thing about football; it teaches you about life. A lot of people don’t understand that. But it does.”

Football has changed a lot since Billingsley wore a leather helmet as a junior high football player, but the lessons taken from it haven’t. 

A group from Plainview’s 1978 team recently returned for a reunion. As they reminisced on their high school days, the now elderly men didn’t talk about the star players. They remembered the players on special teams or the scout team more clearly. The hustlers trying to make the team. Perseverance has a more lasting impact than touchdowns.

Grown men who graduated 20 years ago will walk into the Plainview fieldhouse, and the first question they ask is, ‘Where is Coach Bill?’ Billingsley spouts off the names of players he’s coached who went on to become doctors, lawyers and coaches themselves, beaming with pride like their success is his own championship trophy. 

One of those kids who grew up to win a state championship trophy of his own is Anna head coach Seth Parr. Parr lived in the Plainview fieldhouse, where his dad was the head coach, from fourth grade until he graduated high school. Billingsley remembers a young Seth serving as the team’s ball boy, pleading with his father to throw the football more. When Coach Bill and Coach Parr went for their daily two-mile run, Seth and his brother would tag along and sprint ahead of them. 

Coach Bill was like a second father to Parr growing up; his actual father gave him full rein to discipline him as needed. Coach Bill baptized Parr when he was 15 but also baptized him by fire if he ever heard about Parr cutting up in class. 

Coach Bill is quick to sling an arm around a player today, but he was fierce when he was a full-time coach. Parr still shivers when he thinks about Coach Bill seeing the state of his equipment room. 

“He did care, but he wasn’t the caring (type) that nowadays everybody thinks about,” Parr said. “There wasn’t no milk and cookies with him.” 

But tough love is still love, and Coach Bill has reached the age of mentoring grandkids of the kids he coached. That’s a whole lot of lives touched, and a whole lot of trophies. 

“Everybody in the town knows who Coach Bill is,” Parr said.

At halftime of Plainview’s homecoming game on Sept. 13, 2019, Billingsley was walking to the locker room when a player told him he needed to go to the 50-yard line instead. Weird, Billingsley thought, but ok.

As he approached midfield, he realized his wife, Doris, was standing on the logo. Now he was really confused. What was she doing here?

Doris pointed to the east, at the fieldhouse where her husband had changed so many lives. Then-Plainview head coach Ryan Rhoades and district superintendent HT Sanchez had arranged to rename the fieldhouse. They were wheeling in a new sign now.

Coach Neil “Bill” Billingsley Fieldhouse.

Billingsley had spent decades hearing the crowd roar for the Plainview players. At that moment, they were roaring for him. And there the once-stern coach was, reduced to tears.

“I never have been honored like that in anything in my life,” Billingsley said.

It had been 15,140 days since he was mistaken for a custodian. Now, the building he was cleaning that morning bore his name. And just like the day he retired, Coach Bill was the first person at the Plainview fieldhouse that next morning.