Dave Hyde: Miami Hurricanes athletes, now in middle age, mourn their ‘coach of life’

She wasnt a public name, or athletic star, so you might not have heard of Anna Price .

But when the news spread of her death last week hundreds of University of Miami Hurricanes athletes went to an online message board to share their pain.

And their love.

And their stories.

Man, the stories so many people wrote about how she helped them and what she meant for them, said A.C.

Tellison, a UM receiver in the early 1990s.

Ive never seen anything like the outpouring for her.

Thats fitting, because so many athletes now in their 40s and 50s never met anyone like Price.

For nearly a decade starting with coach Jimmy Johnson at Miami, and then later at Florida International University, she ran the academic support and services program for the athletic programs with a simple slogan in mind: We graduate, and we win games here.

On her side of that ledger, she was the equal of Johnson or Dennis Erickson.

She pushed, counseled, tutored, directed and sometimes monitored athletes in ways that surprised them.

There was the night at the athletes study hall she told one football player, You were late to class today, fell asleep in it and left it early.

Another time a player returned home for a long weekend and planned to skip a Monday of classes.

Youd better be in class Monday or else ...

she said upon surprising him with a home phone call.

These were the kinds of anecdotal stories they repeated on the message board.

And more: Horace Copeland, a proposition 48 athlete who sat out his first football season to study, showed up in her office every day, worked hard and four years later earned his degree.

Price then stepped in when NFL scouts asked about his low score on the Wonderlic pre-draft test.

Dont worry about him hes such a hard worker and has enough talent that you throw the ball, hell figure out how to catch it, she told the scouts before Copeland became a first-round pick.

She congratulated players for good tests, demanded any player with a 2.0 grade-point average attend nightly study halls and didnt hesitate to call a parent with updates if need be She called mine, remembers Octavia Blue, a former Nova High, Miami basketball player and WNBA player who now coaches at Kennesaw State College.

Now Im using a lot of the stuff I learned from her with my young women.

Nothing was beyond Prices scope when it came to getting players graduated.

Twan Russell, now the St.

Thomas Aquinas athletic director, was a double major whose communication degree depended on typing a certain amount of words per minute.

I broke nine of my fingers playing football, he said.

They were always taped, splinted, bent.

I had one more chance to pass the test to get my degree and she went to the (professor) and said, Lets be practical.

You give extra time to students for reading or test-taking when necessary.

Do that here.

Russell, like so many, got his degree.

Miamis graduation rate was 9 and 28 percent the two years before Johnson arrived.

Athletic director Sam Jankovich and Johnson brought in Price to restructure the academic support program.

Get em graduated, Johnson told her.

A tutor coordinator and learning specialist were hired.

An assistant director scheduled student appearances and assured summer jobs didnt interfere with classes.

By Johnsons third year, players graduated at a 72.2 rate when the national average was 58.9 percent, according to College Football Association figures.

The final three years of Johnsons era saw classes have a 75, 75 and 80 percent graduation rate.

It remained above 70 in Ericksons era, too.

Most academic support programs were not structured like I structured it, she once told me.

We led the way in 1988 and 1989.

We were the only big program in the state with 70 percent graduation rate in our football program.

Price studied sports, too.

Take football.

Show a team where the quarterback wasnt smart or disciplined enough to carry a 3.0 grade-point average, she said, and itd be a losing team.

Ditto for middle linebackers, the quarterback of the defense.

Offensive linemen, she found, had the highest graduation rate after quarterbacks.

Its not that the linemen were necessarily smarter that other positions.

They followed directions.

They didnt move until the ball moved.

They did what they were told, and that helps in getting good grades, she said.

Tellison told how Price, taught you from the beginning to sit up front in class, take your hat off and how yes sir, no sir, a good handshake and a warm smile will start you off with a C.

She typically sided with professors over players.

But there were those other times.

One physics professor began each semester saying he disliked athletes in his class.

He kept that up until Tony Coley, a football player and now a successful businessman, corrected a textbook mistake.

Price moved to work on a campus-wide academic program in 1997.

She moved to FIU to bolster the academic program for a couple of former Miami guys, athletic director Pete Garcia and coach Butch Davis.

That meant Gerard Daphnis, who worked with Price as a Miami player, knew that his son, Jaylen, would get the same stellar academic counseling while playing at FIU.

Shes a fixture in our home, Daphnis said.

It seems all her players stayed in touch, too.

Russell was in his 40s and Price would be telling him to get his masters degree.

Russell Maryland, now 55, regrets not returning to finish the master degree in psychology he started in his fifth year at Miami.

She always talked to me about that, he said.

She wasnt restricted to academics.

She was a senior pastor at the Universal Truth Center in Miami Gardens.

One day, a former Miami defensive player, Kevin Harris, walked into the church and saw his advisor preaching.

She found me a grief counselor when I was sophomore and my father died, Harris said.

She asked me, when it was apparent I wouldnt be a NFL player, Whats next? She then helped me get the classes to work as a corrections officer.

Thirty-two-years on the job, Harris wonders like a lot of middle-aged Miami players how their life would have been without her.

She also hired in her final year David Wyman, who now runs Miamis academic support team.

Everything weve done started with her work, Wyman said.

She showed the way.

Sometimes the mentor a kid remembers isnt just one who coached a sport.

Its the one like Price that wasnt in headlines or cheered loudly that, as Tellison said, coached us in the bigger game of life..

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