Nearly two decades after his retirement, and five years since his death in January 2017, he is third on that all-time winningest coaching list.
Principal Brian Pendergest told the Journal-News in January 2017, the football coach “definitely put Badin on the map.” As reported in the spring 2017 Badin High School newsletter, the principal said, “For the vast majority of Badin alumni, Terry Malone is Badin High School. Terry Malone put Badin High School on the map. It’s as simple as that.”
Malone died on Jan. 14, 2017, following an 8-hour scheduled open-heart surgery at Mercy Health-Fairfield Hospital. He suffered from congestive heart failure.
“Terry never identified himself as a coach. He always identified himself as a teacher,” Dean Wright, a 1965 Hamilton Catholic graduate who played for Malone and then coached with Malone, told the Journal-News in 2017. “That teaching just spread over to the football field. He saw that as his mission.”
Malone was a 1952 graduate of Hamilton Catholic High School, an all-boys school that merged with the all-girls Notre Dame High School to form Badin High School, which opened in the fall of 1966.
Over a nearly 50-year coaching career, Malone compiled a 360-117-8 record with Hamilton Catholic and Badin high schools. He retired from coaching in 2003, but he continued to teach.
During his time at Badin, he also at various points in his career as athletic director, dean of students, and interim principal.
Though Malone was first a teacher, he was recognized for his coaching as he was a member of several Halls of Fame, including the first class of the Badin Hall of Honor in 2014, as well as halls of fame for Butler County, Buddy LaRosa Greater Cincinnati, and Ohio High School groups. In 2004, the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce presented Malone with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and is only one of seven people to be given that honor.
In his final game in the 2003 season, Malone’s Badin Rams beat North College Hill 45-7. His players carried him off the field.
“Terry Malone earned an undying and unimpeachable loyalty from his players over the years,” Wright said in the Badin Spring 2017 newsletter. “Just a lot of respect.”
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