PEMBROKE — As former players, coaches, family members and even a game official talked about Ronnie Chavis, the wins and losses compiled on the playing field were not at the forefront of the conversation. Instead, they discussed his impact on their lives and on the community, as a coach and administrator who never failed to advocate for them.

Now, the roles were reversed — they were speaking up for him, endorsing the honor he was receiving in front of a couple hundred friends, family, dignitaries and former players.

Purnell Swett dedicated the Coach Ronnie Chavis Baseball Field Saturday, tangibly honoring a half-century of service to Robeson County athletics by making the field he helped build, home of the program he once led, into his namesake.

“When something like this happens, you think the individual that’s being honored is something special,” Chavis said during the ceremony. “But I can tell you today, I’m not very special; I’m just a human being that graduated from Prospect High School and wanted to be a baseball coach. The Lord intervened in so many ways, it’s unbelievable.”

Chavis, 74, spent nearly two decades coaching high school baseball in Robeson County, first with a single season at Magnolia before taking the job at Pembroke High and, after consolidation, continuing to West Robeson, which later became Purnell Swett. He became the first district athletic director for Public Schools of Robeson County in 1989, serving in that role until his retirement in 2021. The dedication comes as Purnell Swett celebrates the 40th anniversary of West Robeson’s first year.

“During my time as a high school athletic director and the district athletic director, going to meetings throughout the state, I would always get asked ‘when have you seen Ronnie, how’s Ronnie doing,’ and that told me right there how much that Ronnie meant, not only to Robeson County but to the region and state of North Carolina,” said Jerome Hunt, a former PSRC athletic director who played for Chavis and introduced him during Saturday’s ceremony. “I could sit here and go on and on about his accomplishments, but there’s never been an athletics professional in Robeson County that can come close to matching his accomplishments.”

Those accolades go beyond on-field accomplishments or awards won, though there were many, to the relationships with the athletes he led.

“Coach Ronnie, he molded young men into men,” said Purnell Swett softball coach William Deese, who played for Chavis. “When I was coming through, his house was always open to his ballplayers. We spent countless hours, when Ryan and Beth were kids, they were little sisters and brothers to us, and every Saturday we had breakfast and we’d spend time there. Like Coach Ronnie said, there were kids who didn’t have that father figure, and he was the epitome of that coach.”

But the on-field results were good, too, with Chavis’ teams winning five conference championships; he was twice named as a conference Coach of the Year. Chavis, though, says he was simply blessed with great players who earned those victories.

“For 10 years I inherited some of the best baseball players there’s ever been in this county,” Chavis told The Robesonian after Saturday’s ceremony. “You’ve got a Dwight Lowry that played in the World Series, you’ve got a Johnny Dial that played at (UNC) Pembroke and set all kinds of records, Devy Bell went to Carolina and had a super career. I had about 25, 30 kids that played college baseball … I had a lot of players that chose not to play college ball, but I felt just as much about them because those guys contributed to what we were doing.”

During his time as Purnell Swett head coach, Chavis and his players built the field that now bears his name, Hunt said.

“The current baseball field that’s here now was built by Coach Ronnie and Coach Ralph Ward, and some of the players that’s sitting here today,” Hunt said. “That field was built by hand. Over the years, different coaches have came and different coaches have gone, and they’ve put their own footprint on that field, whether it’s the scoreboard, the dugouts, the concession stand, press box, whatever. But Coach Ronnie, Coach Ralph and his ballplayers were the ones who actually built that field.”

Of all the ways that Purnell Swett could have commemorated Chavis’ impact and accomplishments, naming that field in his honor is perhaps the most appropriate manner to do so.

“It couldn’t have been any more perfect,” said Ryan Chavis, Ronnie’s son. “Because that was his happy place, being out on the field working, coaching.”

When Chavis become county athletic director, he said, people in the community wondered if he would be fair to the high schools across Robeson County or be favorable to Purnell Swett after his time coaching there.

“They found out from me, I wanted every kid in the county to have the same opportunity, regardless of what school they were, Black, white or Indian, didn’t matter,” Chavis said. “I told the ADs, if these kids have a good experience as athletes in our system, that’s going to carry on to their children, and it has because the athletic program is still thriving today.”

As county athletic director, Chavis started the Robeson County Shootout and Slugfest tournaments, established the Robeson County middle school athletic conference and the county’s athletic training program. He even began a high school bowling program, with the purpose of providing additional opportunities for students.

“I had one parent that said ‘who in the heck decided to have bowling?’ I said I did,” Chavis said. “He said ‘why?’ I said it gives our kids that don’t play a sport an opportunity.”

Chavis is a member of three halls of fame: UNC Pembroke athletics, after a baseball playing career with the Braves; the North Carolina High School Athletic Association; and the North Carolina Athletic Directors Association. He was named National Athletic Director of the Year by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) in 2009, and was recognized as one of the top 100 administrators in NCHSAA history upon the organization’s 100th anniversary in 2013. Upon his retirement in 2011, Chavis was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state’s highest civilian honor.

“God has a plan for each and every one of us, and his plan for me was to be involved in athletics,” Chavis said. “Every step I took, every decision I made, was based on helping young people. Because some of our young people grow up without a Daddy, some of our young people come from terrible situations.”

Multiple coaches and administrators to speak at Saturday’s recognition said they owed their careers to Chavis, who encouraged them to pursue roles they ultimately served in. Brad Allen, a longtime local high school official who has officiated NFL games for the last 10 seasons, said his advocacy went all the way down to making sure local officials would get big-game opportunities.

“Ronnie Chavis would use his voice to say people in Magnolia and Maxton and Red Springs and Rowland and Pembroke and Prospect and Parkton and Littlefield, and yes, even Lumberton, are worthy of your support,” Allen said. “We’re too divided in this county — shame on us. But athletics allows us to come together, and that man right there, I promise you, if he had not stood up for even us lowly game officials — when they started the Slugfest and the Shootout, they wouldn’t let local officials work because we weren’t good enough. They brought them in from somewhere else. But Ronnie Chavis stood up for us.”

In more than a decade since retirement, Chavis has remained involved in local athletics, frequently providing counsel to coaches and administrators who now occupy the roles he once held.

“It’s always good to give a person their flowers while they’re living so they can sit and smell the roses. It’s an honor for Ronnie and a long time coming,” said Glenn Patterson Sr., the current PSRC athletic director. “It’s indeed an honor for such a great man who’s done so much for Robeson County, not only the athletics but the county as a whole and the community.”

When the Purnell Swett baseball team took to the Coach Ronnie Chavis Baseball Field for the first time since its dedication on Saturday, the Rams did so with his grandsons Jacob Chavis and Jaythan Locklear as part of the lineup.

“My daughter and my son both told me that, they said ‘Daddy, you don’t know what it means that they’re going to be playing on your field,’” Ronnie Chavis said. “I’m glad it happened the way it did because then they get to experience it. … It is an honor that they’re there, and I’m so proud of them that they are playing baseball.”

It is perhaps the best personification that after decades of impact on Purnell Swett and Robeson County, both on the athletic field and beyond, that Ronnie Chavis’ legacy will carry on, and in more ways than just the name of a diamond.