Barry Howard Photo Gallery
Barry Howard, a former soccer standout and coach, was inducted into the Campbell University Sports Hall of Fame in October 2003.
Born in Harnett County in 1945, Coach Howard has spent nearly his entire life in Buies Creek. Much of that time he has devoted to the sport of soccer, to education, and to his church.
A 1969 Campbell graduate with a B.A. Degree in Physical Education, Howard watched Campbell’s first soccer game in 1963 at Taylor Field and joined Coach Jim “Catfish” Cole’s varsity one year later as a college freshman. He went on to earn All-South and team Most Valuable Player honors in 1965 while earning four letters in the sport.
Following his graduation, Howard became one of the driving forces in the growth of the sport on the high school level in the Cape Fear region. He began his coaching career at Buies Creek School in the fall of 1969, heading the boys and girls basketball and baseball teams. He formed the first soccer team in Buies Creek School history in the fall of 1970 and was a founding member of the North Carolina Scholastic Soccer Coaches Association, of which he wrote the constitution. At the time, Buies Creek School was the only Single-A public school in the state that sponsored a varsity soccer team.
Coach Howard left Buies Creek to earn his master’s degree in education from East Carolina in 1974, but returned to teach and coach at Buies Creek School in 1975. He then moved to Harnett Central High School following consolidation in 1978. In ten years of coaching soccer on the high school level, Coach Howard guided his teams to four regional titles.
Coach Howard left Buies Creek in 1981, but returned two years later to serve as President of the Howard Christian Education Fund, Inc. Started in 1926 and incorporated in 1951 by the Rev. Charles Barrett Howard, Sr., the Fund has assisted more than 3700 students through loans, gifts and scholarships. Beneficiaries of the Fund have come from all 50 states, plus 118 other countries. Over 80 percent of those students have attended Campbell.
Howard returned to coaching as an assistant on Tim Morse’s staff at Campbell in the early 1980s and helped build the program into an NCAA Division I contender, one that would go on to win the first two Big South Conference Championships. After spending seven years as an assistant, Howard was named head coach and served two years before resigning in order to devote his efforts to the Howard Fund on a full-time basis.
Coach Howard passed away December 5, 2008 at the age of 63. He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Beverley, his daughter, Amy Elizabeth Ellis, and two grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son, Barrett.
Barry was posthumously inducted into the North Carolina Soccer Hall of Fame in January 2013.
