BATON ROUGE — Broadmoor High School's football stadium hosted a "celebration of life" service Saturday for longtime coach Rusty Price, who died last weekend.

Those honoring him say he wasn't just a coach, but a builder of people. 

"I saw the love he had for these kids, but I also saw the toughness and the expectations he had for them," a former Broadmoor High assistant principal said during the ceremony.

Price went on to coach at his alma mater for 45 years. His daughter says he started the girls cross country program. After leading them to a championship, he became the football coach and then the athletic director. 

"He loved this place, he honestly loved it. He loved the people here, he loved the coaches, he loved the kids more than anything and this was just home,' his wife Marline Price said. 

Marline and their daughter Amber Brown talk about the man he was on and off the field.

"He used to feed the kids, he used to take them home. He brought them uniforms, and we had them in our house. He just had this compassion that he just wanted to help kids be better," Marline said.

His daughter said her dad loved sharing the experience of high school sports with his students.

"They've sent messages and cards saying that they've experienced an impact from my dad and I think that's an amazing testimony to the service of others throughout your life," Amber said. 

The school named the facility for Price in a ceremony in September.

"He impacted so many lives, and we were able to celebrate that in September when the school named the football stadium in his honor," Matt Dobbins, one of Price's former athletes, wrote last week.

"People earlier who've worked under him had said that they just never, they knew they could always show up and he'd be here. Really it was just putting his name on the mailbox in my opinion because this is where he spent so much time," Amber said.