Former Wallace Community College Selma athletic director Lothian Smallwood spent 25 years leading Patriots sports, but the impact he had on his players, community and fellow faculty members will last much longer.

Smallwood passed away last week at the age of 73, but the legacy he built at WCCS lives on through the players he coached and the faculty members he touched.

“I’m going to miss him,” said Houston Young, who worked with Smallwood at WCCS for over two decades and spent a lot of time on hunting trips with him. “I always enjoyed watching his baseball and basketball teams play, win or lose. He was quite a coach, one of those coaches that I would have liked for my children to have worked under.”

Smallwood was inducted into the Alabama Coaches Hall of Fame after posting an incredible 495-293 baseball record during his tenure.

Seven of his teams advanced to the Alabama Junior College Conference state tournament, including in 1982 when his team finished the season ranked No. 6 in the nation.

“I had some really, really good players,” Smallwood said in an interview with the Times-Journal earlier this year. “They had good skills. They were good students and they really tried and that is one reason why we had such good teams.”

Smallwood had only one losing baseball season at Wallace, and that team finished only one game under .500.

“He found talent and he developed it very well,” said Lee Tate, who played under Smallwood from 1978-1980. “He would kill you in fall with conditioning and we all wanted to leave because he worked us so hard, but in spring it would pay off. He knew what he was doing.”

Tate said Smallwood was extremely respectful and in years of knowing him never heard the coach utter a curse word.

“I just really liked him,” Tate said. “I had a lot of respect for him, and he was an easy man to respect. He was very easy to respect, and he did nothing to embarrass you. If he disagreed with a call, he didn’t make a spectacle of himself.”

Although he’s known for his expertise on the baseball diamond, Smallwood also coached basketball when he was at WCCS.

Current athletic director Marcus Hannah played under him from 1986-1988.

“He was a firm and generous man,” Hannah said. “He was the type person that had his moral beliefs and what he believed in he stood for. He showed us how to be a leader, and that’s one of the things I took from him when I went on elsewhere.”

Hannah’s favorite story of Smallwood involves a basketball game where he and current WCCS coach Chris Harrell ran a play eight straight times and scored, but they weren’t running the play all the way through like it was supposed to be done. Smallwood wasn’t happy, called a timeout and told them to run it all the way through. When they refused, and scored for a ninth straight time, he benched them both.

“We ran it the same way and he called a timeout and took both of us out the game,” Hannah said with a laugh. “He was going to get his point across.”

Hannah was on the basketball floor in February when WCCS honored Smallwood for his 25 years as the Patriots’ athletic director.

“It meant a lot to [many] of the employees that were there because he was one of the first employees there when the school first opened,” Hannah said. “… He was there from basically the beginning.”

Smallwood is survived by his wife of 53 years, Carol; son Lamar Smallwood of Waycross, Ga.; daughters Linda K. Myers of Dothan, and LaDonne Aronsen of San Francisco, Calif.; grandchildren, Lindsey, Lauren and Landon Smallwood of Waycross, Ga., and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews.

Smallwood’s funeral service was held Saturday, Nov. 29 at Elkdale Baptist Church.