When the school shooting at Josey High School happened just a couple of days before the school’s scheduled season opening home football game against Savannah, Josey head coach Lawrence Pinkney acknowledges he went into panic mode just for a moment.
Once he discovered his football team, and the vast majority of the school’s student population was safe, his thoughts quickly shifted to the mental and emotional well being of his football team.
“I saw some chaos about to happen,” Pinkney said. “I said, ‘Lord have mercy. We need to get these boys on the football field.’ I wanted to call every parent, every player and see where they’re at. If they were mentally okay and they wanted to play, then I said we’re going to go out here to play this football game. If Savannah said that they didn’t want to come up here to Augusta, I said, ‘OK, we’ll go to Savannah.’ And I was just glad that we were able to get it together and go play a football game.”
The fact that it was a football game Josey won made it sweeter. The Eagles defeated Savannah 28-26, giving them back-to-back season opener wins for the first time since the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
“It felt real good for our team,” Pinkney said. “It felt good for the coaching staff. I know it felt good for the parents to watch their kids play after everything going on. Our kids, our coaches and our community got a long way to go in terms of staying together and pushing these boys to their max potential, but that was a good step forward.”
Bigger than just football
Why focus on a football game during a time when school safety was the foremost concern? Pinkney said the answer to that question is simple.
“If we didn’t play that game, I saw players not wanting to go back to school. I saw kids feeling like they had nothing to play for or nothing to strive for,” Pinkney said. “And then you combine that with them having issues with all the stuff that was going on at school, and when you take this opportunity from them, it may make them not want to do what they’re supposed to do to stay focused on a daily basis.”
In other words, it was a moment when high school football was much bigger than just the game itself.
Burke County Head Coach Franklin Stephens could relate to Pinkney’s perspective — not just because Stephens has been around Georgia high school football long enough to be one the state’s winningest active coaches. But because he saw potential for disaster looming at Burke County as well, ahead of its season opener against Thomson last week.
The Burke County-Thomson game is already a well-entrenched rivalry that draws a packed stadium, regardless of how good the teams are. But with increased gang activity spilling over into Burke County High School in the two weeks leading up to the big game, the county’s sheriff department decided to ramp up security measures which made easier the decision to continue with the game instead of cancelling it.
Burke County defeated Thomson 14-12, but that’s not the only reason why Stephens is glad the game went on as scheduled.
“Here’s the thing about football, and a lot of people don’t realize it,” Stephens said. “It’s really important to your school climate, I believe, to have a good football team and to get them off to a good start, because it eats up your first semester. So if you have a good football team, everybody’s excited about football. They can’t wait until Friday, and the semester goes faster. If you have a bad football team, it’s like drudgery waiting for Friday night.”
And when the football is good, both Stephens and Pinkney acknowledged that it has a positive trickle-down effect on the rest of the student body.
“It helps with the community pride,” Stephens said. “And it helps with the school environment in regard to making it more positive. It gives guys more things to work towards on Friday night, and gives guys a little bit more to take pride in.”
Stephens said he expected his team to come to practice Monday with a little extra bounce in its collective step after the Thomson win. And Pinkney said that’s exactly what he began to see following Josey’s victory at Savannah and ahead of next week’s game at Richmond Academy.
If Josey can knock off ARC, it’ll be the first time since 2015 that a Josey will have started a season with a 2-0 record. That 2015 team is also the last Eagles bunch to earn a state playoff berth.
“It’s going to give our players superhero strength to win those first two games,” Pinkney said. “When that happens, then you find yourself looking forward to the next game, then the next game and the next game. I always say if you can go 1-0, then you’ve got a chance to go 2-0. If you can go 2-0, then you’ve got a chance to go 3-0. And the more you win, you see the team’s pride and self esteem go up. People are patting them on the back, and they’re ready to come to practice, do the right thing at school and become respectable men in our community.”
A way to building better young men
The notion that football — or any sport played in middle and high school — helps students become more responsible in and out of the school community is not a new or foreign concept.
A 2014 study conducted by the University of Kansas showed that 97 percent of student athletes graduated from high school, and that many of those athletes had higher grade point averages than non-athletes.
There’s also an analytical report published in The Sport Journal that found a direct correlation between high school sports participation and higher self-esteem, better problem-solving skills and overall happiness in high school students.
Pinkney has seen it, both as a former Josey football player who graduated in 2006, and one who knows the mid-1990s championship legacy of one of the Augusta area’s oldest high schools. The Eagles won three straight region crowns between 1994 and 1996 while capturing the school’s first and only football state title in 1995.
Pinkney believes that, over time, Josey football can get back to more of those winning ways in a fashion that will reflect positively on both the players themselves and the community at large.
“If we get to winning and coming out here looking like a team, and playing together, and coming out here looking like respectable young men in our community and respectable young men in our school, there’s nothing that these fans and alumni won’t do for these boys,” Pinkney said. “I really feel like that. I feel like if I can keep them staying focused, staying locked in, having pride and discipline, our alumni will put their best foot forward to get ‘em where they want to go.”
It’s the same mission most football coaches have with their high school athletes. But for Pinkney, it’s even more of a personal passion for him now that he’s in a position he’s coveted for a long time.
“It feels great, and it’s a dream come true for me to be back here as head coach,” he said. “I had been coaching at Laney High School and then Josey [as an assistant] for four years. So, when I got the opportunity to be head coach, I jumped on it. I feel like I’m at one of the most historic high schools in this area, and I’m just really passionate about getting them back on level playing field, building respectable young men so we can go and win a championship.”
