By Thomas Lucy

Even if the name is unfamiliar to you, it’s likely that former Collegiate coach Barry Pierce drove you to a sports practice or to an away game, giving his gentle smile and saying a kind goodbye as you stepped off of the green bus. But driving buses was just the occupation of this truly inspiring man, who through his professional baseball experiences, his son’s battle with addiction, and pure determination has changed the lives of many of the people who have encountered him. 

Pierce was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, but his family moved to the West End of Richmond when he was five years old. He battled extreme asthma when he was young and was unable to compete in sports until he was eleven. But once his feet touched the diamond of the baseball field, he fell in love. He was a great athlete throughout all of the high school and he was an all-star at Hermitage High School. 

In the summer before his senior year of high school, Barry was invited to try out for the Kansas City Royals at Parker Field, now the Diamond on Arthur Ashe Boulevard, and he had an excellent showcase. At the end of the week-long tryout, he was offered a contract with the Royals and would have to move to Omaha, Nebraska. But with this intimidating job in front of him, he chose to stay in Richmond, “because I would have to move to Omaha, Nebraska, and I had never been away from home for any amount of time and was scared to go.” Instead, he just got a job at a warehouse of a men’s clothing store. 

Pierce’s working career continued with a job delivering cases of beer throughout Richmond. This painstaking work was tiring, but Pierce pushed through the pain. But his body took a toll from carrying kegs of beer into restaurants for 12 hours a day,  and he ended up needing to have a full knee replacement at the age of 49. This injury was devastating for Pierce at the time but resulted in him finding a home at Collegiate. “I knew I wanted to coach, and I knew that I did not have a college degree, and I knew the only place that offered that was private schools.” Mark Chambers, the Equipment and Field Coordinator at Collegiate, knew Barry through softball tournaments they had played in over the years and connected with him about working at Collegiate. 

Pierce started working at Collegiate in maintenance in the Facilities Department in 2013 and drove buses. Former Collegiate basketball coach and counselor Alex Peavey, currently the VCU men’s basketball team’s mindfulness coach, gave him the opportunity to do what he really had a passion for, coaching basketball. Pierce was an 8th grade Cub basketball coach for many years, and a JV basketball coach for his final year at Collegiate in 2019. 

Pierce’s impact has reached beyond 103 North Mooreland Road. Pierce was a great coach for many Collegiate students, but he was also a caring father. In the fall of 1991, his son Travis was born. Pierce described him as, “out of my two sons, he was more like me, he was a fantastic athlete, very, very smart, unlike me. He got that from his mother.” Travis had many self-confidence issues throughout school in Henrico County. At age twelve, he started using marijuana, which during late middle school and high school led him to start using cocaine, oxycodone, mushrooms, and heroine.  

Travis went in and out of rehab and through many programs to help him stop going along this destructive path. Pierce sent Travis to a Wilderness Program for troubled youth in Tennessee for eight months, and he said, “it was funny because the day that [Travis] graduated the program, the director of the camp thanked [me] for sending [my] son.”

Pierce replied, “No, thank you for taking such care of him.”

The directer chuckled and said, “I thought that it would be good to know that your son’s SAT scores boosted the average of the whole camp.”

Pierce says, “So as you can see, I like to think of [Travis] as a borderline genius.” When he was back at Godwin High School, Travis struggled to try to quit his drug habits. As a family, the Pierces decided to take him out of the school because of the pressure from his former friends. Pierce then told Travis that he must get his GED because he was so close to graduating when he left Godwin. Pierce said to Travis, a few days before the GED exam, “Shouldn’t you be reviewing and studying for this, as it has been a little since you have been in school?”

Travis replied, “I’ve got it.”

Travis took the test and received a perfect score. But his past caught up with him. Travis overdosed two weeks later and was incarcerated for nine months. This led him to be put into a Henrico County drug program, where he was, according to Pierce, “clean and sober and happy for ten months, until that last night.” 

Travis passed away on July 28, 2013. In his honor, Pierce started the Travis Pierce Memorial Fund and runs a golf tournament every year to raise money for addiction and programs in Henrico County. This year’s golf tournament takes place in April and will be the 6th Annual Travis Memorial Golf Tournament and, to date, $11,000 has already been raised for the event.

Ranny Kennon (’14) was one student and player who was close to Pierce and his family. In his Senior Speech, delivered on March 30, 2014, in an Upper School assembly, Kennon spoke about the Pierce family and the night of Travis’ death. Kennon said that Pierce “will go above and beyond for anyone, and his unselfishness is clearly evident from his actions within the community. He has made the most out of an awful situation, by helping complete strangers not make the same mistake his son did. I am beyond grateful to have crossed paths with this man and Collegiate is very fortunate to have him around.”

Coach Pierce has empowered me, as I was on his basketball team for two years and was a first-hand witness to his compassion for the kids that he coaches. His story and impact is something that often goes unnoticed, but he is an inspiration for me and many members of the Collegiate community and beyond. As Kennon stated in his speech, “That night as his son was being carried off, Barry once again said that he would continue to keep his promise that he made years earlier, that would keep fighting for him and keep his legacy alive.”

More information about the Travis Pierce Memorial Fund.

Feature image provided by Collegiate School.