By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

Coach Linden “Linny” Shaw played a major role in developing one of Osceola County’s premier high school athletic programs during a career in education that spanned five decades.

Shaw, 69, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., who arrived at St. Cloud High in 1964, passed away June 14 with his wife, Maudeane, sons, Geoff and Todd, and other family members at his side.

John Wallauer, the school’s long-time football and track coach and one of Shaw’s former students, remembers his first meeting with Shaw when Wallauer was a seventh-grade student in 1965.

“He was an imposing man with a ‘60s-style flat top and a no-nonsense demeanor,” Wallauer recalls. “It didn’t matter whether you were in his classroom or on an athletic team he coached. He demanded your best effort, and you wanted to give your best effort, because you didn’t want to disappoint him.”

Many of his friends remember Shaw for his devotion to his family and to his faith. He was an active member of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of St. Cloud.

Maudeane Shaw said she met her husband when both were students at Auburn University. They married before they graduated.

She said that her husband expected his students to be respectful and to give their best effort.

“He thought that if they carried these attributes forward, then that would serve them in whatever they chose to do in life,” Mrs. Shaw, also an educator, said.

Shaw was hired by Tom Gannarelli, who then was the St. Cloud High principal after a legendary football coaching career. The school, then located on Tenth Street, housed grades 7-12.

Shaw was in his senior year at Auburn University and responded to an ad that Gannarelli placed.

“He told me he called the number and heard this booming voice on the line,” Wallauer said. “They talked for a while, and Gannarelli told him, ‘You’re just the man I’m looking for.’”

Shaw became the assistant football and head track coach. He later established the school’s wrestling team and set up the weight room with help from his good friend and later an Osceola School Board member, Joe Shirah.

“Linny was very, very meticulous when it came to athletics. He really expected a lot from the kids, and he got it,” Shirah said. “We both started at St. Cloud the same year. There were eight of us starting, and 17 on the whole faculty. Everybody knew everybody. You didn’t only know the kids, but you knew the parents and the grandparents.”

Shaw, who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., led the Bulldogs to second place at the 1971 state track meet when, with only four athletes – John Davidson, Dan Holden, Sonny Fullwood and James Fullwood – the Bulldogs scored 38 points.

“They would have won the state championship had it not been for a disqualification for hooking a hurdle,” Wallauer said.

Shirah said that to this day he believes St. Cloud was robbed of the state championship because the coaches of the larger schools did not want to see a four-man team from tiny St. Cloud walk away with the trophy.

“Floyd Lay was the FHSAA chairman at that time. I knew him from when we both went to Lakeland High. He was as straight an arrow as there was. He told me that it seemed a little fishy to him for it to turn out the way it did, but that there was nothing he could do because the other coaches were unanimous,” Shirah said.

Shirah said that Shaw was as concerned about his students’ academic progress as he was about their athletic ability.

“It was like that with all the coaches then. When Coach Shaw walked the hallways, he didn’t have to say anything to anyone about what his expectations were. They knew it just by looking at him,” Shirah said. “You go to some high schools today, and the language in the halls is terrible. That never would happen with Coach Shaw. They took one look at him, and they behaved.”

Shirah said the school’s commitment to academic excellence was reflected by the fact that all 76 members of the Bulldogs’ Class of 1972  enrolled in college.

Maudeane Shaw said that her husband was a loving disciplinarian to Geoff and Todd, both excellent athletes, but that he softened when it came to his grandsons, Caleb, 10, Geoff’s son with his wife, Susan; and Aiden, 4, Todd and his wife Nancy’s son.

“He was loving and doting with them,” she said.

The Shaws moved to Tennessee in 1972 to be closer to their families. They returned to St. Cloud in 1983, when Shaw resumed his coaching career with the Bulldog football and weightlifting teams.

Todd Shaw won a state weightlifting championship at Osceola High in 1988. Geoff was a state weightlifting runner-up.

Maudeane Shaw said Geoff bought his father a huge Auburn pennant for his boat which Linny displayed whenever Auburn played a football game last fall. He was rewarded when the Tigers won their first national championship in more than 50 years in January.

“Oh, yes, he enjoyed that,” Mrs. Shaw said. “He loved Auburn, No. 1, but he softened a little as he got older and he became a big Gator fan, as well.”

Shirah said former Florida Football Coach Ray Graves helped the St. Cloud men design the Bulldogs weightlifting room.

Shaw spent the last 20 years of his career as a science teacher before retiring in 2004.

“He was a master at motivating kids. He was a role model, a man of character and integrity,” Wallauer said.