By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          The Castle, for a few years straight, hosted one of the hottest basketball shows in Central Georgia, the Upson-Lee boys basketball team.

          A little like the days in Macon with Southwest’s boys powerhouse four decades earlier, fans who didn’t get through the door a few hours before tipoff didn’t get through the door.

          Smooth and almost effortless were the Knights, led by guard Tye Fagan along with Zyrice Scott and Travon Walker, and bolstered by a collection of players who in every big game came up with some play, offense or defense, that was as important as anything done by the big names.

          On the sideline, Darrell Lockhart was a physically towering presence who with an upper-level staff had the Knights prepared. There was no foot-stomping or referee-harassing.

          There was an abrupt first-round Class 4A GHSA playoff loss in 2015-16, followed by two straight state championships and 75 wins in a row.

          The Knights were something of a toast in state basketball with the streak, the overflow home crowds for nearly any opponent, a team that just played quality basketball.

          Throughout it all, indiscernible to every outside soul, Lockhart was quietly looking ahead to the end of the era.

          The end of the era has arrived, not with the graduations of Fagan, or Scott and Walker this year, or the second-round playoff loss after two state titles, but with the man connecting the 1999-2000 team to the 2018-19 team, Lockhart.

          “That process started before the season,” Lockhart admitted Thursday afternoon. “It’s not because of anybody. It’s just me. I felt like I needed to change my surroundings so that I could possibly coach a few more years.

          “That’s all it is, just me trying to get that feeling back, rejuvenate, get back into what I was doing.”

          Lockhart said he feels different after every season. Of course, the past few seasons have been whoppers: two straight undefeated years and two straight state championships. They came after a disappointingly early end, in the first round of the playoffs despite a team with very much Final Four expectations. There was some rebuilding to do in 2018-19, and the odds of repeating a perfect season extraordinarily unlikely as new players sought comfort in new roles. The Knights crumbled all the way to two losses. But that wasn’t it.

          Being at one place for 14 years as a head coach is a rarity, at one place for one’s entire career even more rare, and top that off with Lockhart having graduated from old R. E. Lee Institute. It all started catching up with Lockhart.

          “It’s a good thing for a coach to stay that long,” he said. “It means he’s doing something right. I think deep down in, you get way too comfortable, and I was getting way too comfortable, and I needed to step back and take a look at myself and take a look at what’s going on.”

          Lockhart said he started thinking about the future a few years ago, and sharing his thoughts with a small group of select people about perhaps coming to an inevitable fork in the road: stay or go.

          “It was there,” he said. “It was there, just waiting. I can’t explain it, I really can’t. I always thought I was there for a reason. Now that reason was starting to chip away, that there was something else out there for me.

          “I just felt like I needed to get out of there. Get out of the comfort zone. Plus, there’s a little bit of that seeing if I can do this somewhere else, too. It’s all of that. I really needed a change.”

          Lockhart said he turned in his notice last Friday. It was quiet over the weekend before popping up on the Twitter feed Tuesday at dinnertime of state high school basketball writer Kyle Sandy.

          He Tweeted of Lockhart’s departure after 294 wins and the streak and titles, but with no details. Those who thought to forge to his website and list of state boys and girls coaching changes saw Lockhart’s destination, Valdosta.

          “I didn’t know I had 294 wins,” said Lockhart. “I never put the wins on my resume. I wish I knew it.”

          Lockhart offered no specific hints in a text exchange Tuesday night with The Sports Report, but that changed in a text Thursday afternoon: “Valdosta High School.”

          There had been murmurs in recent weeks that Lockhart might be up for a change, and he was quietly linked to a Central Georgia opening, about which he had a conversation. He did interview for another out-of-area job, but didn’t expect to get it.

          “I had never been on an interview before, until then,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

          Perhaps his second-ever job interview went better.

          He said he was 75 percent sure at the start of the year he would be departing, and that jumped to 100 percent when he saw the Valdosta opening.

          “I think it’s a great opportunity for somebody to go in there and try to win some ballgames,” he said. “I understand that it’s football territory, football land, but so is Upson County. It’s not an issue for me. I like all athletes.”

          The 58-year-old is stepping into a new life and a new chapter of his career unlike the one he’s stepping out of.

          Lockhart has spent the majority of his life in Upson County, having played at old R.E. Lee Institute before going to Auburn and then playing pro basketball – in this country and elsewhere – for several years.

          He was a latecomer to a coaching career, starting at Upson-Lee in 1999 and then taking over as head coach in 2005, all in his hometown.

          Valdosta hasn’t had a 20-win season since 2011-12, but went through a stretch of success under Rufus McDuffie leading up to that year, reaching the Class 6A semifinals in 2011 at 23-6 and quarters in 2009 at 28-2. The Wildcats won three region titles in five years under McDuffie, who also had a quality stint at Mitchell-Baker that included five state titles. He went to Washington County and then to Valdosta, where he also became principal for a year.

          Lockhart goes from one-school county and close-knit community to one with two large public – Class 6A Valdosta and Class 7A Lowndes – high schools, and major rivals, and one GISA high school, Valwood.

          Upson-Lee has a scenic campus just west of Thomaston, with newer-looking-than-they-are facilities built when the school opened up in 1992 after Upson High and R.E. Lee merged, and a fine arts center, finished in 2013.

          Valdosta, which has a stronger basketball program than Lowndes, is nearing the completion of its first year in a monstrous $85 million new school on Inner Perimeter Road, northeast of downtown. It has nearly 80 classrooms and more than a dozen science labs to fit a 9-12 student body of about 900 more students than Upson-Lee.

          Lockhart hasn’t strolled around the Wildcats’ compound – he’ll do that on Friday - so he can’t claim to have been dazzled by it. Again, it was just time.

          Lockhart isn’t one for manipulation, so when the move happened was when the move happened, and it just so happened to come during Upson-Lee’s spring break, helping to make for a quiet news cycle. The Sports Report of Central Georgia remains the only media outlet to fully report Tuesday on the apparent move, and now after getting Lockhart’s confirmation.

          Even-keeled and steady, Lockhart isn’t outwardly emotional, only the occasional on-court outburst, such as it is. Never too extreme in any direction. Nevertheless, the final days during decision-making were beginning to wear on Lockhart.

          “Every day,” he said of how emotional the process has been. “Every day, when I made my mind up to leave, walking through there and not saying anything to the kids that I was with. There was a part of me that said ‘Look, I’m not leaving, I can’t leave these kids.’ … But the kids are going to be fine. Sometimes you have to look out for your best interests.”

          And Lockhart said he finally started doing that.

          The school and athletics program are going through some transition. Dr. Jarvis Price, the father of volunteer basketball assistant Michael Price, is taking over as principal, replacing the retiring Tracy Caldwell, an Upson High grad. And there are some other coaches – head and assistant - who are moving on, including two of Lockhart’s assistants as well as head girls basketball coach Brandon Ingram, who is heading to Seminole County.

          There aren’t a lot of Central Georgia public high school head boys basketball coaches with that many years in one spot. He had seniority in Region 2-4A, followed by Greg Nix, who has been Mary Persons’ head coach for seven seasons. Not many others in Central Georgia have cracked the double-digit mark in years at their current school, a short list including Crawford County’s Clyde Zachery (38 years), Central’s Andre Taylor (19), Rutland’s Ron Christian (estimated 14), Westside’s Josh Grube (11), and Dooly County’s Towandi King (10), among others.

          “It’s rare,” Lockhart said. “But it made (success) that much sweeter, because I’m from there, to coach and do that in your hometown. I learned a lot. And I lost many a friend for a little while over a basketball game. In your hometown, you can imagine.

          “There’s a lot of difference of opinion, and I’m sure there’s going to be a difference of opinion no matter where you are. In your hometown, it kind of stings a little bit more.”

In a conversation of more than 30 minutes, Lockhart noted over and over that it was just time for a change, time to try something different, that there was nothing going on at Upson-Lee or in Thomaston that inspiring him to think about leaving.

          Indeed, the basketball team’s fan-driven Facebook page – Upson Lee Runnin’ Knights basketball - overflowed with only positive offerings Tuesday when the news broke. As of late Thursday, a Tuesday thread on his departure – mostly without details of his destination – was a collection of congratulations, good luck, and thanks.

          One said that “Pops need (sic) a documentary”. Not a one indicated it was time for him to go or grumbled about the 2018-19 season falling short of public expectations, although a drop-off was inevitable based on normal turnover.

          “I don’t know if there are any hard feelings,” Lockhart said. “If there is, then it just has to be.”

          There is, of course, a notable bump in compensation with the move, but a fairly irrelevant bump in compensation.

          “Money is one thing,” he said. “My feelings about basketball and being somewhere else were another.”

          Taking the job was fairly easy, after all that thought. But the hard part is coming, when spring break is over and he gathers with his former team, including those who have been integral parts of the 111-6 run the past four years.

          “The toughest thing for me is the attachment you grow with some of these kids, and the families,” he said. “That’s the toughest part. It’s really tough. I know the kids are feeling it, but it’s really tough on a coach. As a coach, you think of all these kids as yours.”

          And he’s had 14 years of Upson-Lee kids as his own, as head coach, and an extended family throughout the county. Keeping the inevitability of a major career and life change inside can be exhausting.

          “I think I am (in a good place), now that this is out,” said the former teammate of Charles Barkley. “Like I said, it’s hard going through the building knowing you got this big thing on your chest that you got to get out. My reason for leaving, again, … is more or less me.”