Hall of Fame Round Valley football coach Tot Workman dies at 82

Tot Workman coached his last football game some 30 years ago. But he never stopped working. Never stopped coaching. Even when he took administrative jobs and bounced around the Navajo Indian reservation.

And up until Monday, with his son steering his dad in his wheelchair onto the American Leadership Queen Creek track, he was helping coach the hurdlers on the track and field team.

On Friday, the Hall of Fame coach died. He was 82.

Ty Workman, Tot's son, said he battled cancer for 13 years, before succumbing to colon cancer.

Workman led Eagar Round Valley to back-to-back 12-0 state championship seasons in 1979 and 1980. His 1985 team tied Snowflake 21-21 for the state title, before the Arizona Interscholastic Association went to tie-breakers for state finals. He was 52 when he retired as a head football coach. At that point, he won more games than any coach in Arizona. He fought to get the small-school all-star football game in Arizona.

"I tell people, 'If my dad had gone another 10, 15 years like everybody does, they'd still be trying to catch his winning record,' " Ty said.

Early in his career, Workman coached six sports in one year, leading both the football and cross country teams in the fall, both the basketball and wrestling programs in the winter and both the baseball and track and field programs in the spring, Ty said.

Tot was a star running back and baseball pitcher at St. David High School and played football at Northern Arizona University when it was called Arizona State College at Flagstaff, before the name change in 1966.

When he was the AD at Ganado, Workman hired a coach for track but Tot still was out there leading the team.

"He loved the Native people," Ty said.

Tot Workman was inducted into the Arizona High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame in 1990, three years before his last football season as head coach at Round Valley. In 1989, he was inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame. And 10 years later, into the National Hall of Fame.

He started his coaching career at Stewart Indian School in Nevada, before a stint at Wellton Antelope, then Snowflake. He was at Box Elder High in Brigham City, Utah, before returning to Arizona to lead Round Valley. He spent time at Keams Canyon Hopi, Chinle, Ganado and the Arizona Boys Ranch in Queen Creek.

For more than 20 years, Workman coordinated and emceed the Arizona American Dairy Council and Arizona Coaches Association All-American Awards that helped high school athletes receive money towards their college tuition.

Workman's success led to the building of the first high school domed football stadium in the country in the early 1990s.

Workman's intensity was matched by his quick wit and sense of humor. There was no sugar-coating anything he said, which today might have gotten him in hot water with the school.

He was reporter's dream, a quote-machine, who always told it like it is, which was refreshing in the 1980s and '90s.

"He was supposed to have died 13 years ago," Ty said of his dad. "He took his chemo and called it 'the breakfast of champions.' The people loved him where he'd go in. He'd say, 'Hey, I'm here for my breakfast of champions."

Robbie Sherwood, who played football for Workman on Round Valley's 1984 state runnerup team and 1985 co-state championship team, paid tribute to the tough, 5-foot-5 coach on his Facebook page Saturday.

"Standing maybe 5’5, he was a walking fire hydrant, made from the same metal, and could also erupt like one if you didn’t perform to his very high expectations," Sherwood, a former journalist, writes.

Sherwood said Workman once made them run 65 100-yard sprints after overhearing somebody say a curse word under his breath.

"Because like all great high school coaches, Workman was about way more than football," Sherwood writes.

Sherwood said Workman would tell him, “I don’t care if you’re a ditch digger, Sherwood. You’re going to be the best gosh darn ditch digger that ever picked up a shovel, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir!” Sherwood responded.

"I decided to go into journalism and politics instead of ditch digging. But to this day, whenever I face an obstacle, an overwhelming situation or impossible deadline, it’s Tot Workman’s voice I hear every time, pushing me forward, demanding excellence and believing in me."

Ty said in the last few days, many people wanted to see his dad, realizing they were his final days.

"The one key thing that he always brought, my dad brought energy to every practice," Ty said. "I got to hear him on Monday tell a girl after she game out of the blocks, 'If you don't come out of there better than than, you're going to run a 400 (seconds).

"Even to this day, he coached how he knew. And kids just rallied around him. I kind of had a feeling that it was going to be his last practice. When he was still pretty coherent, a kid would come in and want to see him. I'd tell the kid to tell him who you are. Every one, when the kid would say it, my dad would say, 'You need to move the standards forward if you want to vault 13 feet.' Another girl would come into the room, and he'd say, 'I expect 8 feet out of you Friday.' "

Coaching to the very end.

Note

Funeral service will be held March 31 at 11 a.m., at Meetinghouse, 19730 E Ocotillo Rd, Queen Creek.

To suggest human-interest story ideas and other news, reach Obert atrichard.obert@arizonarepublic.com or 602-316-8827. Follow him on Twitter@azc_obert

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Hall of Fame Round Valley football coach Tot Workman dies at 82