LANDER: Gryphons' belief was all that mattered during state title run

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary /
Rocky Mount High players surround kicker Chase Miller after he kicked a winning field goal in overtime against South Point High School Friday at the NCHSAA 3-A State Championship at Kenan Memorial Stadium. Rocky Mount High won their first state championship title in 52 years 24-21.

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary /
Rocky Mount High School kicker Chase Miller kicks the winning field goal in overtime bringing the final score to 24-21 against South Point High School at the NCHSAA 3-A State Championship at Kenan Memorial Stadium.

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary /
Rocky Mount High School kicker Chase Miller gets picked up by Rocky Mountвs Donte Whitaker Friday after Miller kicks the winning field goal in overtime against South Point High School at the NCHSAA 3-A State Championship at Kenan Memorial Stadium. Rocky Mount High won 24-21 in overtime.

Telegram photo / Abbi O’Leary /
Rocky Mountвs Rasam Najemeddin, left, and Donte Wilkins celebrate with their victory with their fans Friday at the NCHSAA 3-A State Championship at Kenan Memorial Stadium. Rocky Mount High won 24-21 in overtime.

A Rocky Mount High trainer stood, arms crossed and glassy-eyed, near the 40-yard-line on the East side of Kenan Stadium on Friday night, attempting to talk himself into believing what he had just witnessed.

“Did you ever think,” he wondered aloud, to nobody in particular, “that we would be standing here, watching these boys lift this trophy?”

And therein lay the beauty of Rocky Mount High’s first football state title in 52 years, a 24-21 triumph over Belmont South Point on Chase Miller’s 20-yard chip shot field goal in overtime: not once did the Gryphons pay heed to what others thought all year long.

They believed in one another, even after a gut-wrenching early-season loss at 4-AA Eastern finalist Apex Middle Creek and after a 40-point blowout loss at home to Greenville Rose, which played for the 4-A state title on Saturday.

They believed – even when it appeared as though the last will and testament to the Gryphons’ season had been signed and the envelope sealed in the third round against No. 10 seed Eden Morehead – when Rocky Mount High trailed by nine in the fourth quarter before Nick Bynum’s game-winning touchdown run with four seconds remaining on 4th-and-goal.

They believed in fourth-year head coach Jason Battle, a former Gryphons quarterback, who stayed the course at his alma mater, who never got too high or too low and allowed his team to be themselves. Battle’s players lifted him onto their shoulders at midfield after the trophy presentation, and he proceeded to deflect all credit away from himself in his press conference afterward.

Battle reminded his players after practice Tuesday of what the Gryphons’ reputation around the state is: that they’re athletic at every position. They never say, Battle continued, that Rocky Mount High is well-coached.

Let’s get this settled: Battle and his staff – Jermaine Jones, Jason Bracey, Brandon Arrington, Harry Harris, Fonte’ Lyles, Koron Nickelson, Carter Varnell, Michael Peebles and William Cherry – coached 47 teenagers like family, and that matters more than any win or loss ever will.

The coaching staff guided Rocky Mount High to a 5-0 run through Big East conference play, and through the death of Gryphons junior varsity running back Lavontae Brown, who was gunned down in broad daylight on Nov. 6, hours before the regular-season finale at Northern Nash.

One of the indelible images of Rocky Mount High’s season was of the Gryphons, clad in the same yellow helmets, white jerseys and navy blue pants they wore Friday, marching silently and arm-in-arm off their buses and down the hill to the field at Death Valley just 15 minutes before kickoff against Northern Nash.

Most of Rocky Mount High’s current varsity players didn’t know Brown well, but freshman linebacker Nyshir Hargrove lifted Brown’s gold No. 9 jersey above his head Friday as the Gryphons lifted their state championship trophy.

Rocky Mount High won that game, but Battle said in the postgame huddle that his players would be turning in their jerseys early if they played that poorly in the playoffs.

Never in doubt, right?

The Gryphons took care of business against Burlington Williams in the first round, and put away South Johnston one week later.

As the final minutes of that second-round game ticked away, and word trickled in of Morehead’s huge upset at No. 2 seed Havelock, meaning Rocky Mount High would host its third round game, far-off thoughts of a state championship run became concrete.

But this team?

The one that ended the regular season unranked in 3-A in the Associated Press poll?

With players who had seen so much go against them – fathers shot dead, single mothers doing their best to hold families together – and still came back for more, through the drudgery of summer workouts to the biting cold last Friday in Mebane?

Maybe, just maybe, it was all of us who were missing what Rocky Mount High was building all along. The Gryphons looked around at each other after the loss at Middle Creek and knew they had something special.

All they needed was a chance, as has been the rallying cry for the last five weeks, and they got exactly that.

So few in the Rocky Mount High contingent Friday night wanted to take credit, and yet there were so many deserving of it.

But the Gryphons didn’t reach Kenan Stadium by searching out individual recognition this year, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

By Foster Lander

Sports Writer for Rocky Mount Telegram

Sunday, December 13, 2015