By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Bill Slaughter keeps adding coaching victories in a high school career that has spanned decades.
The 1974 graduate of Southern Alamance has racked up more than 300 baseball victories and he doesn’t want to slow down.
“I love it,” Slaughter said. “I’ll do it as long as my health holds out.”
Slaughter, 70, is the coach at Chatham Charter, which won the Central Tar Heel 1-A Conference and advanced to the Class 1-A West Region finals in the state playoffs. The Knights finished the season with a 22-6 record, putting Slaughter’s baseball win total at 309.
Slaughter coached for years at Chatham Central, where his team secured a state championship in 2006.
“And you want to win another one,” he said.
Slaughter’s last season with the Bears was 2015.
“When I left Central, I thought I was done with,” he said.
After one season off, he was back on the field with Chatham Charter. He took over in the program’s second season and has been there ever since.
Slaughter grew up in the Village of Alamance. His brother, Johnny Slaughter, was a longtime coach of several sports and athletics director at Western Alamance Middle School and served as manager of the Burlington-Graham Post 63 team in American Legion baseball.
Bill Slaughter also spent time as boys’ basketball coach and athletics director at Chatham Central.
Of his baseball win total, 170 of the victories came with Chatham Central. Reaching the latest milestone of 300 wins in an April result against Jordan-Matthews was special.
“It was a lot of fun because it made you think back to those Central teams and all of those kids and what they were able to do,” Slaughter said.
His Chatham Charter teams have won a conference championship for four consecutive years. The Knights tied in the regular season with Clover Garden and then won the league tournament championship game by defeating the Grizzlies.
