The lights at Bayside High School’s football stadium had barely dimmed from Friday night’s playoff battle when the unthinkable happened. Just two days after leading the Marlins to a quarterfinal game, coaches across the Beach District woke up Sunday morning to texts and missed calls they couldn’t quite process. 

The news that morning broke hearts across Virginia Beach and beyond. Jon White, the 43-year-old Bayside head coach, had passed away.​

Virginia Tech Football expressed the collective mourning of an entire community when they tweeted their condolences. “We are saddened by the passing of former Bayside High School head coach Jon White,” the statement read. “His care, guidance and love for his players will always be remembered. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and the entire Bayside community.” 

No details about White’s death were available. But the outpouring of grief spoke volumes about the man who had dedicated his life to shaping young men through football.​

Robert Jackson, now Landstown’s head coach, stared at his phone in disbelief when he saw the message. He had two missed calls from David Thompson, a former player. That’s when concern turned to dread. Jackson called back, only to hear Thompson struggling to speak through his grief. Hearing the news broke both men.

“It feels like someone snatched my heart right out of my chest,” Jackson said. “Football aside, Jon was just a good dude. He was a good person.”

A former player for the Marlins and then Hampton University, White took up a coaching role headfirst. Perhaps because he realized he’d be able to change more lives by mentorship as opposed to playing himself. His story was one of coming full circle. White was an All-Beach District linebacker for Bayside, helping lead the team to a district title before playing college ball at Hampton University. His coaching journey started at Cox High as an assistant before he returned home to Bayside in 2008, and later became the head coach in 2013.

Over 12 seasons, White compiled a 79-61 record, with his best year coming in 2016 when the Marlins went 9-3. But the coach’s impact was way beyond numbers. For the Marlins, he was also known as the man who’d go out of his way to help those in need, the testimonies for which are strewn all over social media since the news broke.

Sharing photos of her son alongside the deceased coach on Facebook, one former student’s mother fondly talked about White helping her boy through “one of the hardest times in his life, guiding him and helping him see the bigger picture”. Because that’s exactly the kind of person he was: Intuitional, genuine, and a man who truly cared. And no one was a greater witness to this than Cox High School Falcons’ former coach and White’s former colleague, Bill Stacheski.

“Jon was like a brother,” he said after hearing the heartbreaking news. “In addition to being an amazing father, husband, coach and teacher, he was simply a genuine and good human being. His entire life was dedicated to helping young people better themselves, and the beautiful thing about Jon was that teaching the right lessons always mattered more to him than winning football games. We lost a great friend and mentor, and my prayers are with his wife and boys during this difficult time.”

Robert Jackson shared that sentiment. It was White’s consistency of being a good human being that Jackson reminisced about the most. “In his short life, the number of people he touched, Jon was always the same guy,” Jackson explained. “You didn’t get one Jon one day and another Jon another day. He was always that same guy.”

White poured everything into his alma mater and his players. Expectedly, the shock waves from his sudden passing rippled through every life he touched.

The community remembers

“Coach white thanks for being my gym teacher teaching us stuff to know thanks for making us have fun in your class and have positivity and the fun we had in your class of the things we did in gym rip,” one former student wrote on X. The tribute reveals who White really was. He was someone who understood that making class fun and fostering positivity mattered just as much as teaching proper form or running plays.​

Another message spoke to the bigger picture of what White accomplished: “Great Highschool football program. Takes great teachers of men like Coach White. Hope Marlins heal and remember the great VA Beach men still carrying those foundational lessons from him.” That sentiment gets at the heart of White’s legacy. 

One social media user wrote, “Love u coach get ur rest❤️” while other shared, “Rip Coach🙏🏾.” 

As the Bayside community processes the sudden loss of a man who was both mentor and friend, the messages keep coming. The hole he leaves behind is one that can’t be filled. It can only be honored by remembering the positivity, passion, and genuine care he brought to every interaction.​