The football field where the LaFayette Bulldogs play their home games is down past the school on Alabama Avenue and cut into the side of a hill.
It’s a rough-cut treasure of a place, and they play that kind of down-home country ball here in Chambers County that will grab your soul and not let go. It’s iron-man football at an elite level. The best players, like some of the ones last Friday when LaFayette played rival Lanett, go on to play at Alabama, Auburn and other schools in the SEC. Lanett won 26-0, but this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, the score was secondary to just being together.
It was senior night at LaFayette, and the Bulldogs' players ran through an enormous banner before the game that read: “Together forever; Never apart; Maybe in distance; But not at heart.”
It was all hidden away among the tall pines much like the rest of Chambers County, Alabama. The population was larger in 1910 than it is today, and the Old South lingers here like a ghost in the trees. In places like Chambers County, high school football is important in a way that people in cities can’t really understand. The sport holds shrinking communities together when community is all there is to hold onto.
They’re not all gathering in schools here because of the coronavirus pandemic, but they’re still playing football with packed stadiums. It’s hard to understand from the outside looking in, but attend a game here, and smell the fish fry inside the stadium tucked into the woods, and hear the fans wince at the sound of the rivalry game’s first big collision, and it starts to make sense.
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With the right ears on a Friday night in the fall you can listen to the drum line and hear the beating heart of the South. It’s a complicated sound. The heart is in conflict with itself this football season during the pandemic.
The problem is this. The Alabama High School Athletic Association and the state government are allowing schools to play football without testing for COVID-19. It’s a risk to public health, but teams are doing it anyway because football is that important.
The game is more like a ministry than a sport in rural Alabama, and Lanett coach Cliff Story is the best there is at shaping boys into young men. Before the season, Story questioned playing football during a pandemic while his school was closed. He is now preparing his talented team for another state championship run. Sports might not be essential, but after spending a few hours with Story on Friday it’s easy to understand why football is so vital to the city of Lanett. He has 48 players on his roster, and 38 are from single-parent homes.
For many places in Alabama, not playing the games feels like a greater threat to the community than the virus. Football is more than entertainment, and it’s more than bringing people together, too. Here in Chambers County, it’s about shaping the lives of vulnerable young Black men.
Why is football so important? A lot of people have been asking that question, and few people understand the answer better than Story. In 20 years as Lanett’s football coach and athletic director, he has built a model for athletic success.
His first year as a coach, he had to kick about half the players off his team. Now? Lanett has won two football state championships in the last three years, and three basketball state championships in the last four. The track team has also won two state titles. Story says Lanett didn’t have any state championships before he arrived.
How did he do it? He did it with love, but also no-nonsense discipline. Story paddles players when they get out of line in class. He asked the city for permission to drug test his players and they approved it. Two positive tests, and players are off the team for a year.
Whenever Story gets the chance, he uses his faith to teach important lessons about life.
“Let God be the driver,” Story said before the team loaded up the buses for Friday’s away game.
Story’s godson, Quae Houston, died tragically over the summer, and this season is being played in his honor. Houston, who was 18, graduated from Lanett in the spring, and was set to attend Faulkner University on an academic scholarship.
His No.3 jersey is framed in Story’s office. On Friday at LaFayette, this year’s No.3, Kadarius Zackery, had two interceptions, a 94-yard punt return for a touchdown and a 32-yard run for a score late in the game. After the greatest game of his life, he said his friend Quae was with him on the field helping him to do it.
For young people, these games are life-building moments for so many different reasons.
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The Panthers haven’t allowed a point to rival LaFayette in two years. The game was a rout in the end, but apparently not up to Lanett’s standards. With his team kneeling in a semi-circle around him, Story addressed the season’s progress and looked ahead.
“We’re going to get where we need to be,” Story said. “Trust me. We’re going to get where we need to be.”
His players gathered their things, and walked to the team buses for the ride back down Hwy 50. Story and his wife, Krisse, were the last two people on the field in the end. Story missed more than a month of summer practice with the coronavirus, and two of Krisse’s family members have died from the illness.
The Storys still worry about playing football this season, but they are the reasons this sport is so important.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.