Carrying the Torch

Photo by shane darby

In recognition of a 24-year coaching career, Cecily Butler was inducted into the AHSCA Hall of Fame
By Ellen Orr

Coach Cecily Butler, long-time Arkansas coach and current PE teacher at Genoa Central, was recently inducted into the Arkansas High School Coaches Association (AHSCA) Hall of Fame. Her career in education and athletics spans 33 years, during which time she has encouraged and inspired countless student-athletes. But before she was a no-nonsense, award-winning coach, Cecily herself was a young basketball player, looking for role models in an athletic landscape dominated by men.

When Cecily was a junior at Murfreesboro High School, a new coach for girls’ athletics joined the staff—a woman named Glenda Ray.

“First female coach I ever had,” Cecily recalled.

Coach Ray challenged Cecily—who “was kind of a rebel,” she said—from their first meeting, when teenage Cecily propped her feet up on one of the tables.

“She walked over and looked at me, and she said, ‘You will take your feet off my table,’” Cecily said. “Well, a few minutes later, I had them back up on my table. She came over and said, ‘I’ve already told you once. I will not tell you again. You can leave and find another class besides athletics. If you can’t follow simple directions, then you can’t be coached by me.’ And I was like, ‘Finally, someone headbutted back!’ She was very soft-spoken—never yelled—and I just really wanted to please her and make her proud. She didn’t care how good [at sports] I was. She wanted me to be a good person.”

That influence propelled Cecily through high school and into college at Southern Arkansas University, which she attended on both academic and athletic scholarships. She played basketball and ran track for SAU and double-majored in English and kinesiology. From day one, the kinesiology program proved challenging—and life-changing.

Cecily Butler coached at Genoa Central from 1997 to 2018. submitted photo

“My freshman year, I was even cooler than I was in high school,” Cecily joked. “I’m 18, and I know a lot. I know everything, pretty much! So I go to this class, which was Theory and Fundamentals of Sports. We were learning about softball, and I thought, ‘I know how to play softball. I don’t need to listen to this.’”

When the teacher—an older lady with big, white hair whom students called “Miss D”—asked Cecily a question, she couldn’t answer. Miss D confiscated what should have been Cecily’s class notes but was actually just a page of doodles.

“She said, ‘Stand up,’ so I stood up,” Cecily remembered. “She said, ‘You are a total waste of scholarship money. You are an embarrassment to our athletic program. You need to get out of athletics. You need to go flip burgers somewhere and learn about work ethic and learn about what it takes to be a student athlete, because that you are not. Get out of my class.’”

When Cecily told her basketball coach what had happened, she discovered that “Miss D” was no other than Coach Margaret Downing, a legendary coach, professor, dean, and bonafide trailblazer in women’s sports—and, in order to graduate, Cecily would need to take at least five of her classes.

Miss D did not let Cecily back into her class that term, even after pleas from the current basketball coach. She did, however, accept her the following semester, and the semesters afterward.

“She was a hickory nut,” Cecily said. “She was hard and very demanding. I wrote down every word that came out of her mouth, was never late, and never missed a class. Everything was done on time. She never cut me any slack—never even acted like she liked me.”

Then, during Cecily’s final year at SAU, she gave birth to her first child, Dakota. Miss D canceled class—an unprecedented move—and left a note on the chalkboard for Cecily to see her. With newborn Dakota in tow, she walked with trepidation to Miss D’s office.

Miss D told Cecily that she was not going to let parenthood prevent her from graduating. She arranged childcare for Dakota for the rest of the school year. The only remaining obstacle between Cecily and graduation was one elusive credit—Miss D’s class she’d been kicked out of her freshman year. At the time, the course was offered to men and women in alternating years, and that year was a men’s year. Miss D insisted that Cecily be allowed to take the class with the men so that she would graduate on time—and she did.

Cecily has carried the torch of both Coach Ray and Miss D throughout her career, at both Prescott School District and Genoa Central School District. When she first applied to coach at Genoa Central in 1997, the athletic director denied her on the basis of gender.

“‘I’m gonna be honest with you,’ he said,” Cecily recalled. “‘We’ve never had a girl down here coaching, and I just don’t see it working. I’m going to hire a man for that position. You can sue me if you want to.’”

However, when the male applicant rejected their offer, the AD changed his tune. Not only was Cecily offered a job on campus but also a home—literally. For years, Cecily and her family lived in a mobile home on school property.

Coaching basketball, track, and crosscountry (and, briefly, softball), Cecily worked thousands of practices and competitions over 24 years. She mentored hundreds of girls, providing young athletes with the same structure and standards she herself had needed as a teen. Her influence was made crystal clear last July, when many of those former student-athletes showed up at the AHSCA Hall of Fame ceremony in Hot Springs. Cecily said that nearly 100 people showed up in support of her, most of whom were once her students.

“I knew then that my life’s work had mattered,” she said, “even if just to one person—but to have 100 people show up ... that was really the highlight.”

At the AHSCA Hall of Fame induction, Cecily celebrated with around 90 former students, colleagues, and friends, as well as with members of her immediate family: son-in-law Patrick Markham, daughter DonnaJo Markham, husband Jeff Butler, daughter Daiton McAlpine, and son, Dr. Dakota Butler. submitted photo

Cecily retired from coaching in 2018 and has since been the K–4 physical education teacher at Genoa Central. She and her husband, Jeff, have three children. Dakota, their son, lives in Texarkana and holds a doctorate in pharmacy. Daiton, their eldest daughter, practices law in South Carolina. Their youngest, DJ, joined the Butler family when she was a middle-school student in Cecily’s class; she is now a registered nurse and the mother to Cecily’s first grandchild, Isaiah.

“Shaping and growing kids into adults who make a difference in this world—that’s what it’s all about,” Cecily said. “I was blessed to have such an opportunity.”