Oscar Wilson may be 74 years old, but he was about to learn what every American teenager finds out too late. That Life360 tracking app your family had you download? It shows your top speed. Every time you drive.

Wilson has served as Longview High School’s running backs coach for 47 seasons. In that time, he’s made the drive down I-20 West to Dallas more times than the Lobos have beaten their arch-rival Marshall (Longview notched its 68th win over the Mavericks in Week 2). His daughter, grandkids, and ex-son-in-law, South Oak Cliff head coach Jason Todd, all live there. Wilson makes the two-hour trek on Saturday mornings, cuts his daughter’s grass, then heads back like he’s just going around the corner. 

But on this particular day, he was on his way to visit his best friend, Wayne Ingram Sr. The pair were Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brothers at East Texas State. They are godfathers to each other’s kids and took family vacations together every summer. Ingram has battled cancer the couple of years and underwent an extended hospital stay after a major incident in March. Every day after Longview’s spring practice, Wilson called his godson, South Oak Cliff assistant coach Wayne Ingram Jr, with the same question: “How’s my boy doing?”

The sense of urgency to see his friend, combined with his comfort on I-20 West, must’ve caused the pedal to inch toward the medal. No sooner had he parked at the hospital than he got a call from his grandchild.

“Paw-Paw, what are you doing going 93 miles an hour to Dallas?”

In both his professional and personal life, Oscar Wilson speeds to the people who need him most. Plenty of those people, like Todd, Ingram Jr, and his 15-year-old grandson will be on the opposing sideline when Longview makes the oh-so-familiar trip to Dallas for a game against South Oak Cliff on Friday. The scoreboard at Kincaide Stadium will say which team won that night, but Todd knows there’s a more important, albeit unofficial scoreboard on how we live our lives. He strives every day to keep the score close to Oscar’s.  

“If I can be half of him, I’ll be alright,” Todd said. “Sometimes, I’ll be like, ‘Man, I know you can’t always be perfect.’”

Truth is, Oscar hasn't been. No one is. But high school athletics gave him the tools to become the man he is today, and he’s dedicated his entire life to giving back through high school athletics. 

Wilson grew up in Marshall, 23 miles east of Longview, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He lived down the street from the all-white Marshall High School. Not only could he not attend -  he couldn’t walk on the sidewalk closest to the building.  

“If you did walk on the other side of the street, you were going to be called everything but a child of God,” Wilson said. 

Wilson decided to stay at the all-black Pemberton High School even when Freedom of Choice in 1968 allowed him to attend Marshall. All his life, he’d been reminded that those who were Black had to stand back. That building could never be his home.

But he also chose to stay at Pemberton because of Willie Todd, his track coach. Willie Todd always gave Wilson a ride home or some food whenever he was hungry.

“He had a great influence on my life because he was a Christian man and he treated everybody the same,” Wilson said. “Regardless of your status, you were good in his eyesight. That’s the way I try to live my life.”

Over five decades later, Longview head coach John King describes Wilson in the exact terms that Wilson describes Todd. 

“You don’t get former players and former students of all walks of life coming back to ask about somebody unless they treated them right,” King said. “I’m not going to say he always treated them easy. He gives tough love. But they know he’s right.” 

Last Friday night against Marshall, Wilson got his first head coaching opportunity in his 47th season, and it came against his hometown. It was a poetic moment with unfortunate circumstances behind it. Wilson served as interim coach for King, who’d undergone a procedure for a recent mouth cancer diagnosis. 

Wilson was the only choice to lead the Lobos in King’s absence. He was hired to Longview’s varsity staff from Forest Park Middle School in 1979. Since then, he’s served as the girls’ track coach, powerlifting coach, running backs coach and, now, assistant head coach. But his most important role is leading Longview’s devotional period in the pregame locker room. 

In a profession where many look for another school to grab onto the next rung of the coaching ladder, Oscar and his wife, Latitia, are old-school. She taught in Longview ISD for 45 years, retired in 2022, and then went back to work last year. He has coached three generations of Longview families. 

“I wouldn’t say that being comfortable and complacent is why he stayed,” King said. “He’s got as much fire in him as he’s ever had.”

So why has he stayed? This wasn’t his original plan. In fact, he was skeptical when Longview head coach Doug Cox came to him at the end of the 1978 season with a job offer. The Black players on Longview’s team had recently walked out of the football program. Wilson was clear he wanted to be hired because of his coaching acumen, and not as a conduit between the Black players and white coaches. 

But over time, he realized he could be to these kids what Willie Todd was to him. He could create a home for generations of students in the same East Texas towns where he never felt at home. Everyone is familiar with stories of a man who made it out of a tough situation. Wilson’s story is a man who made it out, then went back in and help change it into the community it is today.

“I had an opportunity to go back home and influence those young kids,” Wilson said. “I could tell them, from my life experiences, how to handle different situations in Marshall, Texas.”

You can measure the wins Longview has racked up since Wilson joined the program in 1979 (429, to be exact). But you cannot measure the lives he’s altered. 

There won’t be any conflicting emotions when Longview takes on South Oak Cliff, even though Wilson’s son-in-law, godson and grandson are on the other side. That’s because he has adopted generations of unofficial sons in Longview, and Longview has embraced him as one of its own, too.

“I bleed green,” Wilson said. “We go out to win. The Lobos are first. When people ask me, ‘You’re from Marshall. How do you feel when you play Marshall?” I say, “I don’t feel anyway. I come to win as a Lobo.’”