Kent Briggs, a quarterback, assistant, and head coach whose name became woven into the fabric of football in the mountains of western North Carolina, died on Friday, June 21, 2026, at the age of 68. Across parts of four decades on the sideline, he gave his energy to his alma mater and to a high school community that came to claim him as one of its own.

Briggs grew up in Asheville and played football at A.C. Reynolds High School before continuing on to Western Carolina University, where he took snaps at quarterback from 1976 to 1979. He arrived as a redshirt freshman who completed 25 of 40 passes for 353 yards and four touchdowns, and over his four years the Catamounts strung together their first run of consecutive winning seasons. The school he played for would remain at the center of his life. According to Western Carolina Athletics, he spent 15 of his 36 years in coaching at the university.

His coaching began at Western Carolina around 1980, and by 1982 he was a full-time assistant working under the longtime coach Bob Waters. He was part of the staff during the program's memorable push to the 1983 NCAA Division I-AA national championship game. From there his path widened. He spent roughly 11 seasons as an assistant at North Carolina State and also coached at the University of Connecticut, gathering experience that he would eventually bring back home.

In 2002 Briggs returned to Cullowhee as the 11th head coach in Western Carolina football history, a role he held through 2007. His teams were capable of stunning the larger programs around them. They knocked off a second-ranked Furman squad by a score of 41-21 in 2005, and in 2004 they rallied past Appalachian State 30-27 to reclaim the Old Mountain Jug, one of the more cherished trophies in the rivalry. As Fox Carolina recounted, those upsets stood out among the highlights of his head coaching tenure.

The chapter that may resonate longest came later and a little farther up into the hills. After a stretch as an assistant at Smoky Mountain High School, Briggs took over the program at Cherokee High School, posting a 37-29 record there. In 2017 his team went 14-1 and won the first state football championship in the school's history, a result that turned an ordinary autumn into something the community would remember for generations. He was named All-Western North Carolina Coach of the Year for the season, and that same year he was welcomed as an honorary member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Through it all, those who knew him spoke of a steadiness and a focus that he carried onto the field every day, qualities that helped power that championship run. As WLOS chronicled, Briggs kept his attention fixed on coaching and on the players in front of him, pouring himself into the work and into the community that had embraced him. After he stepped away from coaching, he continued to give back to his alma mater as a part-time adjunct instructor.

Briggs was survived by his wife, Lisa, his daughter, Alex Briggs-Allison, and her husband, Sam Allison, along with his brother, Randy, and an extended family who carried his name forward. He was preceded in death by his parents, Violet and Corky Briggs, and his son, Cody Kent Briggs.

Kent Briggs measured his career not only in victories but in the players he shaped and the towns he served, from the campus where he first put on a Catamount uniform to a high school that he helped lift to a championship no one there had ever known. He coached through hard seasons and harder days, and he did it with a steadiness that drew people to him. The communities of western North Carolina remember him as a teacher of the game and a fixture of their Friday and Saturday afternoons, a man whose loyalty to the people and places of the mountains outlasted any final score.