TCU football’s Sonny Dykes comes from a coaching family, and he married into one, too
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Following a legend
Sonny Dykes has been around legendary coaches his entire life, and he’s now ready to follow in one’s footsteps.
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Why Sonny Dykes is seen as the right football coach to follow Gary Patterson at TCU
TCU football’s Sonny Dykes comes from a coaching family, and he married into one, too
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March Madness always provides memorable moments in college basketball, and nobody liked seeing Abilene Christian upset Texas last March more than new TCU football coach Sonny Dykes.
Why? Dykes’ brother-in-law is Joe Golding, who was Abilene Christian’s coach. Golding has since moved on to take over UTEP’s program.
“I have a ton of respect for Joe,” Dykes said. “He coaches hard and his teams play really good defense. He has a real strong belief, like I do, that the most important thing you can do is get your guys to play hard. That’s Step 1 — play relentlessly hard.
“He gets more out of his players collectively than he does individually. They’re a better team than they are players.”
That respect goes both ways.
“Sonny, No. 1, he’s a people person and he’s very smart,” Golding said. “He understands the big picture. He sees things before they happen. He’s been a really good resource for me. Everything he was able to accomplish at SMU? He’ll do those same things at TCU.”
The coaching profession is something Dykes and Golding know as well as anyone. They were born into legendary coaching families.
Sonny Dykes’ father, Spike, became a memorable figure as Texas Tech’s football coach from 1986 to 1999. When Spike retired in 1999, he did so as Tech’s all-time winningest coach before being passed by successor Mike Leach. The team’s meeting room to this day is named after Spike Dykes.
“I had a sense of what he meant to Lubbock to a degree,” Sonny said. “Once I started coaching and went away and then would come home for Christmas, I got a better idea. There was a certain level of stature he had acquired, but he always took it in stride. He was always just one of the guys, which is what made him unique.
“But he embodied West Texas in a lot of ways. He grew up poor and grew up in West Texas towns, so he had a different perspective. And he really moved around a lot trying to make it as a football coach.”
As much as the Dykes name remains football royalty in West Texas, the Golding name carries similar weight in Wichita Falls. The field at the town’s Memorial Stadium is named after Joe Golding Sr.
Golding Sr. was the longtime Wichita Falls High School football coach from 1947 to 1961, leading the Coyotes to four state titles. His son, Joe Golding Jr., then became one of the most successful girls basketball coaches in the state by leading the Lady Coyotes to 321 victories in 20 years.
Golding Jr. originally started out as a football coach, but he switched to girls basketball so he could coach his daughter Kate, who is now married to Dykes.
As Kate’s brother Joe, the family’s third generation of a Golding coach, said jokingly, “My dad switched over for my sister’s junior and senior years and then she decided to try out for cheerleading. So he switched, then she basically quit.”
It worked out for all involved in the end. Now Kate is set to become the First Lady of TCU football, a role she’s embraced at every previous stop Dykes has made.
“My wife gets the job. She understands the time commitment and that I’m going to spend more time with a lot of the players than her and the kids,” Dykes said. “But she also understands how important her role is in all of this and having relationships with the players and knowing the players and the parents. She can have conversations with them that they’re not comfortable having with me or the other coaches.
“I can’t tell you how many SMU players have come by the house and she’s cooked a meal for, or taught some of them how to make a cake. She’s counseled guys. She’s still part of their lives. They stop by the house all the time, and she talks to former players every day. Her role and what she does, I think she understands how important it is.”
All of it comes from being part of a coaching family.
This story was originally published January 2, 2022 at 5:15 AM.
