Youth Basketball Loses a Fixture as North Little Rock Honours Coach Floyd Beard

North Little Rock turned out on Friday to honour Floyd Beard, the longtime youth basketball coach known as Coach Butter, who died on Wednesday aged 56. Family, friends and former players released balloons in black and gold — the colours of The Family, the organisation he founded.

“He was a coach, a mentor, a father,” his son Anton Beard told the crowd. “He raised a bunch of boys to men.” Anton Beard said one of his father’s biggest points of pride was making sure kids got to college, and that he always made sure everybody around him was okay.

At the Glenview Community Center, Beard ran basketball programs for more than two decades, according to Temeka Martin, director of the Sherman Park Community Center — skill sessions, leagues and tournaments that kept generations of North Little Rock players on a court and on track.

Toledo knows this kind of figure well: the coach whose program is really a second family. Beard’s son said his father’s health turned suddenly, and the size of Friday’s farewell suggests his impact will carry on through the players he coached and the lives he shaped.

Source: North Little Rock community honours Coach Floyd Beard after death — Rock City Wire (rockcitywire.com)