Jim Grobe honed his skills in the Lynchburg area

GREENSBORO, Ga. — There aren’t any reminders in Jim Grobe’s Wake Forest office of his time at Liberty High School. No game balls. No pictures. Those are tucked away safely in his home.

He likes to keep his workspace decked out in black and gold out of loyalty to his current head coaching job.

But he certainly is fond of his time in Bedford.

Before he became one of the most respected college football coaches around, before schools like Arkansas came calling for him to take over their programs, Grobe was the head coach at Liberty.

He says much of his college coaching career has been built on what he learned in his two years in the Lynchburg area.

“I just learned an awful lot those first couple of years,” said Grobe, who went 7-13 as the Minutemen’s head coach in 1976 and ’77. “It probably shaped my coaching career quite a bit. I think things that happen to you early kind of stick with you.”

Grobe, 56, left Liberty in 1978 to begin his college career as an assistant at Emory & Henry. He was a longtime assistant at Marshall and Air Force before taking over at Ohio University and now Wake Forest.

His reputation has swelled at every stop. Ohio had 13 straight losing seasons before Grobe turned it into a winner, and he has transformed Wake Forest, once a football wasteland, into a perennial ACC contender.

Grobe led the Demon Deacons to an ACC championship and the Orange Bowl in 2006 and back-to-back bowl games for the first time in school history the last two seasons.

Some people, including Sporting News college football expert Tom Dienhart, think what Grobe has accomplished at Wake Forest is nothing short of a miracle.

“The bottom line is this: No one does more with less at a place that had mastered losing before he arrived,” Dienhart wrote recently. “Grobe’s 20 wins over the last two years are the most in school annals.

“The ACC title and the Orange Bowl berth he led the Deacs to in 2006 was one of the greatest football accomplishments in the last 25 years.”

A reputation for getting more out of less talent has followed Grobe everywhere.

It started at Liberty. The Minutemen were coming off their second straight losing season in 1976, and many of the team’s best players from the previous year had graduated.

“The local newspaper did all that preseason stuff, and we weren’t picked very high in the Seminole,” said Ricky Falls, a senior linebacker at the time.

Liberty was more than competitive in Grobe’s first season. It went 5-5 with wins over Seminole District rivals Jefferson Forest and Staunton River. Two of its losses were close.

“The Seminole District then was just like it is now. It was a tough district,” said Falls, who now serves as Staunton River’s athletic director. “To go 5-5 was an accomplishment for us.”

Grobe said he might have learned more in that first year than in any other of his 33 years in coaching. Perhaps most importantly, he learned how to relate to his players.

One of the philosophies that has endeared Grobe to so many players over the years is his ability to be tough and demanding while also compassionate and sympathetic.

He can raise his voice at times, but he is quick to put his arm around a player to let him know he cares.

Grobe wasn’t much in favor of that balance entering his first year at Liberty.

He planned on being a disciplinarian, and he picked out a trusted assistant, John Walker, to counter his tough-love approach with emotional support.

Walker was to be the good cop to Grobe’s bad cop.

That arrangement fell through just minutes into Grobe’s very first practice in the summer of ’76.

Grobe saw one of Liberty’s big linemen lagging during a team run. He pulled Walker aside.

He wanted his assistant to tell the lineman to return to the starting spot and run again.

“I said, ‘OK, I’m glad to do that, but I thought I was the good cop,’ and he said, ‘We just changed roles,’” said Walker, the recently retired superintendent of Amherst County schools.

Grobe learned his first big lesson that day. He couldn’t limit his emotions and always be the disciplinarian. He couldn’t always be the good guy, either.

He had to find balance between the two.

“I think probably there, I was more apt to kick them in the seat of the pants and then hug them around the neck, where now, I’m more apt to hug them around the neck and then kick them in the seat of the pants if they need it,” Grobe said.

There were some tough losses that first season at Liberty. The Minutemen opened with an 18-8 setback to William Campbell and followed that with a 28-6 loss to Rustburg.

Grobe tried to remain positive, but the losses ate at him.

His anger boiled over during a pre-game film session one Friday evening. Grobe doesn’t confirm or deny the story, but Falls and Walker give similar accounts.

“All of a sudden, he gets like he’s mad at the projector, and he picked the projector up and threw it across the auditorium,” Falls said. “You talk about dead silence. Every kid’s eyes were just like, ‘Oh my goodness. This guy’s wild.’”

Such outbursts aren’t commonplace with Grobe. He learned early in his career to limit his aggression. He also learned to not take losses so hard.

“I was probably too theatrical back then,” he said.

Grobe’s main recruiting philosophy also took shape during his time at Liberty.

Instead of targeting all highly ranked recruits, Grobe pursues high school players with top-notch work ethics.

He is motivated by the kinds of players he had those early years in Bedford.

“I think back to all those kids that were the hardest workers, and those are the kinds of kids I try to bring into my program now,” Grobe said.

He gives players like Aaron Curry, a senior linebacker who was lightly recruited out of high school, a chance to play at the highest level.

Curry rewarded Grobe’s trust with an All-American season last year.

“I’m the guy that they have to pull out of the meeting room. They’ve got to kick me out of the weight room. They’ve got to lock me out of the practice field. I find ways to sneak onto the practice field so I can keep working,” Curry said.

“I think those are the kinds of guys that coach Grobe recruits.”

Thirty-two years later, those Liberty High School football players still influence Grobe. He has depended on them — the model they set in 1976, at least — to carve out quite a successful coaching career.

Grobe is so beloved now that when he rebuffed Arkansas last December to stay in Winston-Salem, a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief.

“We knew he’d make the right decision,” Curry said. “When he sat down and told us that he was going to stay, that was like the best day in Wake Forest history.”