William and Mary football coach Jimmye Laycock wasn’t expecting any surprises when he arrived at Paul’s Deli Tuesday night to do his usual broadcast “Chesapeake Bank Coach Jimmye Laycock Show” with 92.3 The Tide.
That soon changed when a deli bartender led Laycock’s old college friend, Brian Wolf, to the coach’s makeshift broadcasting booth where the two men caught up before the radio show.
It’d been decades since the pair spent time as fraternity brothers in Kappa Sigma at William & Mary.
“I just wanted to say hello. I don’t want to interrupt anything. I wanted to shake his hand,” Wolf said of Tuesday’s surprise visit.
Wolf and his wife came to Paul’s Deli to surprise Laycock, waiting in the packed, dimly-lit bar with a pint of beer. He was about half way through the pint when he began reminiscing about his and Laycock’s time at William and Mary.
“It’s hard to remember what I had for breakfast let alone 50-some years ago, but all I remember is he was an outstanding person, very, very competitive. [He] had a great sense of who he was, and what he wanted to do. He always talked about wanting to be a coach. And, I’m just happy to see how successful [Laycock is],” Wolf said.
While the meeting was impromptu, Laycock said he enjoys visits from former classmates and football players .
“When you stay at a place as long as I’ve stayed here, you meet a lot of people. A lot of people who have ties with William and Mary like to stay connected,” Laycock said. “It’s always good reconnect with people that you went to college with.”
Laycock’s old William and Mary connections include Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin who played for Laycock at William and Mary. Laycock remembers getting a call from Tomlin, at two or three in the morning, the year the Steelers won the Super Bowl.
Wolf remembers the story, which Laycock told him four years ago when he stopped by the William and Mary athletics building to visit the coach.
“I’ve got a number of players who have gone pro, but it’s always interesting and exciting to see what career path a lot of our players take,” Laycock said. “Some go into pro sports but others are very successful in other areas. I’ve got former players in business, in law, in medicine. It’s always interesting to find from them what they’re doing and how they’ve evolved in their life. I take a lot of pride in that.”
