ATLANTA – Hal Lamb had remained an emotional rock for as long as he could. In the moments after Calhoun’s heartbreaking overtime loss in the Class AA state championship game, with many of his players lying face down on the Georgia Dome field, Lamb encouraged them to walk off the field with their heads up.
He continued to hold his emotions in check during the postgame interviews and even when his younger son Ben tapped him on the shoulder from behind and buried his face in Hal’s chest and sobbed.
But after addressing the team, Coach Lamb stepped outside Calhoun’s locker room into the hallway, knelt against a wall and dropped his face into his hands, unable to hold back the tears any longer. It was the third year in a row that Calhoun had lost to Buford in the state final.
Much as Hal had consoled his own son moments earlier, his father Ray, a legendary prep coach in Georgia for 32 years, reached out to pick Hal up and hugged him close.
After the short embrace, Ray Lamb patted Hal on the shoulder and stepped aside to leave him alone with his thoughts again.
“I just told him his kids played hard and fought with great effort and that’s all you can ever ask,” Ray Lamb said as he nodded in Hal’s direction. “Your job as the coach is to get them prepared and have them play with that kind of effort, so he did his job.
“I’m proud of him. He’ll get [a state championship]. It just wasn’t his time to get it just yet, but he will get one. For whatever reason, sometimes its just not meant to be. I know as coaches you replay these type games to find things you could have done differently; that’s only natural. But you can’t do that. You can’t look back and second-guess yourself.”
Ray Lamb won two championships at Warren County and another at Commerce in 1981, with sons Bobby – the former Furman head coach – and Hal as the team’s quarterback-receiver combination. He also lost three championship games and admitted it was much more fun watching his sons play than coach because he could see how losses like this one weighed on them.
Losses always sting worse the closer a team gets to claiming a championship. But to lose three straight title games to the same team will weigh heavily on coaches, players and the community long after the team returns home. Especially considering the Yellow Jackets lost by three in 2009, then fought back from a 17-point second-half deficit before falling in overtime Friday.
“Somewhere, somehow I would like to understand this,” said Hal Lamb, whose program has lost just five games the last three years. “That’s what I asked my dad, why this had to happen to us again. When I lay my head on the pillow tonight, I still won’t understand it.
“We played extremely hard, and I know there are worse things in life than losing a football game. But it hurts. For the kids and the coaches and the community, it hurts. I told Ben to keep his head up and keep fighting. And my dad – he’s great – that’s pretty much exactly what he told me to do. I guess that’s all any of us can do.”
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293.