Don Fendley, GHSFHA researcher and former coach
Today’s interviewee is Don Fendley, a retired Georgia high school football coach living in Martinez and best known for his time at Westside of Augusta from 1984 to 1996. For several years, he has been a researcher with the Georgia High School Football Historians Association, where his main contribution has been tracking NFL players from Georgia. GHSF Daily’s spotlight today lists Georgia players on opening-day rosters, but Fendley’s job continues through the season as he documents which Georgia players actually play in an NFL game – which is the criterion to make the GHSFHA’s list.
1. How did you get involved in the GHSFHA’s NFL project? “After discovering the historians group about 2006, I had a lot of the booklets that the Georgia High School Association put out listing coaches and started looking up missing coaches, and after that ran its course, I got started on NFL players. I believe that Bobby Hodges [the GHSFHA’s original webmaster] asked me to do it. What I like about it is finding an NFL player from Georgia that I didn’t know about that got lost in the shuffle.”
2. What does keeping up with Georgia’s NFL players entail for you? “Drafted players from Georgia are not hard to find. Undrafted free agents from Georgia are the great puzzle. A guy’s name might show up on a roster a year or two after college for some reason. There was a player from the Atlanta area, Eric Smith, who played at Virginia. By accident, I found that he played at Columbia. [NFL rosters don’t make it easy to know where players went to high school.] You have to toe the line and keep up with it. Like today, I saw that Duke Shelley [from Tucker] got put on a practice squad and a guy got cut, T.Y. McGill [from Wayne County], who was on injured reserve. I keep a transaction roster on all 32 teams through the season.”
3. Who is the most interesting player that you've learned about? “Probably Kyle Sloter. He was a quarterback at Mount Pisgah Christian. The first three years at Southern Miss, they used him as a wide receiver and he caught seven passes in two years. They dropped his scholarship. He transferred to Northern Colorado, where he was a wide receiver and played on punting and kickoff teams. He moved back to quarterback in the spring of his senior year. The starter got hurt in the second game, and he was the quarterback the rest of the season. His college career shows lots of sticking it out. He signed with Denver and was released. Signed with Minnesota’s practice squad and was activated and on the roster for two years but never played in a game. He signed six more times to practice squads and active rosters. So I have had him on my lists for pretty good while. He must be fairly smart to pick up these teams’ offenses if they are as complicated as they make out to be.” [Sloter was taken in the first round of the 2022 USFL Draft and was named to the All-USFL team. The Jacksonville Jaguars signed him in July but released him in August. He’s still not on the GHSFHA’s list of Georgia NFL players because he’s never played in an NFL regular-season or playoff game, which is the requirement. “But I guess he’s made a dang dollar or two if he’s been on a roster so many times,” Fendley said.]
4. What has been your attraction to high school football? “From the time I was a 130-pound lineman at Putnam County, I always wanted to coach. I spent three years with the great Dan Pitts at Mary Persons. I spent 45 or 46 years coaching overall. I enjoyed letting the players all have a chance and watching them improve. When I was at Westside, I had people in the ninth and 10th grades that didn’t play much, and then you look up when they’re in the 11th grade, they’re on first team. I still follow it pretty closely. John Small at East Coweta, Lee Chomskis at Lincoln County, Matt LeZotte at Richmond Hill and the late Bert Williams at Georgia Military Junior College all played for me at Westside. Plus, my late brother’s son, Richie Fendley, is at Bowdon. Football or any high school sport just gives a person a chance to be part of something.”