Marshwood community will have the chance to celebrate the life of Rod Wotton on June 5
SOUTH BERWICK, Maine – On Sunday, June 5, in the Marshwood High School Auditorium, friends, family, fans and former players will have the chance to celebrate the life of Rod Wotton.
Wotton died last November after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 82.
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The public is invited to Sunday’s event, which starts at 2:30 p.m. Past coaches and players of “Coach” Wotton are encouraged to wear game jerseys or similar attire. Remaining guests are asked to dress casually. Light refreshments will be provided beginning at 2 p.m. Masks are strongly recommended.
One of New England’s greatest high school football coaches, Wotton coached teams at South Berwick and Marshwood high schools in Maine and Saint Thomas Aquinas in New Hampshire for 47 years. At the time of his retirement in 2010, he had more wins than any high school coach in New England – a record of 342-81-3. His teams won 21 state championships in five different decades.
With Wotton, of course, football was much more than the wins and losses, or gold balls, for that matter.
“He was one of those guys that impacts people,” said Mike Zamarchi, who played for Wotton in the 1980s and coached with him for a short time. “If you were around him, he impacted you. He was a motivator; everyone looked up to him. You loved playing for him. He had that special quality some coaches have. He was a special person.”
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Wotton was a native of Rochester, New Hampshire, where he was a three-sport star at Spaulding High School. He attended and played baseball at the University of New Hampshire. One of his teammates and friends was Dan Parr, who also passed away in 2021. It was an intersection of coaching greatness. Parr went on to coach basketball, retiring in 2016 with a New Hampshire record 704 wins.
Wotton took his first coaching job in 1961 as an assistant at old South Berwick HS, which won the Class D title, the first of Wotton’s 21 championships. Next year he was named the head coach, guiding South Berwick for four seasons until Marshwood was built in 1966.
The rest, of course, is history. His teams won 17 state titles, the most by any coach in Maine. He is also the state’s only coach to win titles in every division (A, B, C and D). From 1983 to 1987, Marshwood fashioned a 45-game winning streak. At the time it was the longest active streak in the nation.
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Wotton coached at Marshwood until 1992 and taught until 1994. He spent his retirement years living in York with his wife, Norma. He is also survived by his three children: Peter, Jeffrey and Wendi.
Wotton followed that up with a 15-year stint in his native New Hampshire at Saint Thomas Aquinas in Dover, beginning in 1996. At the time the program was in the midst of a 15-game losing streak. Wotton righted the ship. The Saints won four more state titles under him before he stepped down in 2010 as the winningest high school coach in New England.
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More than a decade later, Wotton’s name still carries immense respect. The Bangor Daily News in Maine ran an online contest in 2020 to select “Maine’s Greatest High School Football Coach of All Time.” Out of a field of 32, Wotton emerged as the winner.
Hardly a surprise.
"Rod Wotton was an absolute legend in our community,” said Marshwood Athletic Director Rich Buzzell. “Marshwood will always be known as the house that Rod Wotton built. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to different parts of the country and when people find out I work at Marshwood one of the first things they say is ‘Oh, your football team is great and do you know Rod Wotton?’ But Rod was more than a legend to us all. They say great coaches are gifted with an ability to unlock what is bound up in others. Rod had that gift and then some. Rod may be gone physically, but his footprint is on so many things in our community."
Marshwood High School is still accepting donations to the Rodney C. Wotton Scholarship Fund (mail to: Marshwood High School: 260 Dow Highway, South Berwick, ME 03908).
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Rod Wotton celebration of life for Marshwood football coach
