Lakeside Boys' Basketball Coach Larry Pierce Retires After 33 Seasons

Larry Pierce knows what is means to persevere.

The veteran basketball coach has seen his share of memories, been through the storms and is still has a sharp mind of the game.

Now, after 33 years of drawing up plays and mentoring youths, the boys’ basketball coach and athletics director has decided to call it career. With basketball behind him, he has decided to work in the family business of commercial real estate management.

Although his squad finished 5-20 during his in his final season, he was proud of how his team responded given the fact they lost 12 players from a state playoff team a year ago.

“I’ll miss the relationship with the guys, and although we struggled this year in terms of wins and losses, it was a great group,” Pierce said. “They kept trying hard and they never got discouraged and you can’t really ask any more from guys that were in their situation.”

Born and raised in DeKalb County, Pierce played basketball at Chamblee High School. Upon graduating, he enrolled at Erskine College in Due West, SC, for a year before moving west to Washington. He later attended a community college before receiving his degree from the University of Washington. It was in college where he began to devlop an interest in becoming a teacher and basketball head coach.

But teaching jobs were scarce on the west coast, so he and his wife elected to move back to Atlanta, where in 1978; he took a job at Sequoyah as head coach of the junior varsity team.

He would go on to hone his skills with the junior varsity squad before being promoted to varsity in 1983. Pierce served in this role for seven seasons until the school closed in 1990.

Throughout the decade, he worked at Salem Junior High School, Druid Hills and the first of his two stints at Lakeside in 1999.

However, after three years, Pierce was faced with a dilemma between staying with a team on the cusp of a championship and working at the same school his daughter attended, Collins Hill. Family has always been a priority for Pierce, so it was an easy decision for him to accept the job in Gwinnett County.

“It was the right decision in terms of the family, which has always been much more important,” Pierce said. “It was a time for me to put my words into action. We’ve always said we build our program around God, family and basketball. It was a good chance to make that decision to help my family and it worked out.”

Pierce left Collins Hill after two seasons, sat out a year, and returned to Lakeside in 2004. While coaching has been a part of his life since 1978, there are aspects he said he won’t miss.

“Coaching has changed a lot, as has teaching over the last few years,” Pierce said. “It’s hard to follow the rules and be competitive in today’s world of high school sports. We were not going to break any rules or get into any gray areas or anything like that. It was going to be tough to stay competitive in this environment in this region we’re in, with how things are in DeKalb County.”

Lakeside principal Joe Reed said one aspect that’s always stuck out about Pierce has been his mission of coaching without bending the rules.

“He’s always done things the right way,” Reed said. “He follows the spirit of the rules, not just the letter. I appreciate people who behave that way. This is an age where all the coaches who recruit get all this attention. They’re just using somebody else’s athletes. I just appreciate the fact he doesn’t do that.”

Lakeside is searching for a replacement and Reed has requested Pierce to be involved in the process. Pierce added that a lot of quality candidates have shown interest, but they will evaluate all the applicants before making a final decision.

 “I tell all my assistants you have to persevere,” Pierce said. “I applied for 23 head coaching positions before I got one.”