My friend Lou Goetz was far more than a coach.
I met Lou when we were both in our 20s. He was an assistant for new Duke basketball coach Bill Foster. I was sports editor of the old Durham Morning Herald and was known as a Carolina guy. That could have been a problem from the get-go, but it wasn’t. Our close friendship lasted more than 45 years.
When Lou died shockingly and suddenly two weeks ago from an aggressive cancer, I helped the family write his obituary.
Some friends from his life in basketball, which he left in 1981, were surprised by what Lou did after entering the business word and becoming a devoted family man.
He never really stopped being a coach, you see.
He developed commercial and residential real estate properties, the latest project perhaps his proudest — Village Hearth cohousing in Durham, which is owned by and welcomes members of the LGBTQ community.
Lou led his friends on bike trips and adventures across this state and country and abroad, which he organized much like a game plan. His network continued to expand far beyond the sports world.
He and his wife Tracey, whose father is former Duke basketball legend and Pittsburgh Pirates all-star Dick Groat, encouraged their two children to participate and explore.
Their daughter Elly spent a decade in Central America with the Un Mundo non-profit. Lou made several trips there to join in building schools and helped her Honduran husband acclimate here when they moved back to Durham.
He rarely missed one of his son Mickey’s high school or college basketball games, always with pen and stat sheet in hand. Mickey now lives in the Austrian Alps with the wife he met while they were both traveling through India.
Of his many sayings, his favorite might have been, “The best gift you can give your children, is to love their mother.”
Lou was beloved by friends who could have made up five soccer teams, always there for them in good and bad times. I know that personally.
He never stopped being a coach. Rest in peace, my friend.
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