Jeff Davis football program throws arms around a hurting community

I caught up with Jeff Davis head coach Lance Helton coming out of his Touchdown Club meeting in Hazlehurst ... and the Jackets are gonna play this week. 

It was supposed to be homecoming, but in lieu of everything that is still going on in the county, the game with Bacon County is going to be a central point for both communities. Anyone with local EMTs, law enforcement, first responders, any kind of public service will be admitted for free in a community that is going through a lot. 

Helton understands that with two brothers in that line of work and there is a prevailing thought that the county and the fans of Jeff Davis need to see the Jackets play. It’s a chance to get away from everything that has weighed everyone down for the last week-plus even if it’s only for a night. 

“I had 52 kids at practice this week,” he tells me. “Thirty-eight of them don’t have power.” 

Yet Helton, his staff, and everyone attached to the high school have done a lot of things off the field to help move everything forward -- even if it is a day at a time. 

“Last Wednesday, when the fieldhouse got power for the first time, we turned it into a hot food service line for players, family, and anyone who needs it. Last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night we had wives and coaches making to-go plates to the tune of 100-150 meals. Our players would take 20 meals with them to give to folks down the road to people that didn’t have power.” 

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The Jeff Davis community has helped provide food for those in need.

Credit: Jeff Davis Facebook

This week, Helton is getting up around 6:30 a.m. to start grilling at 8 to give breakfast sausage to anyone stopping by. Local churches are also helping in this process and the team is helping clean facilities up across the board. 

“There are bigger objectives here than who to kick out on a buck sweep,” Helton tells me without a second thought. “I’m experiencing players coming to school with injuries that I’ve never seen. They’re sore from working with things like chainsaws.” 

For Helton, the situation is multi-fold. He’s a husband and a father. His family was sent back to Sandersville. He has a generator-powered section of his home where he’s by himself -- passing time by playing his alma mater, Ball State, on XBox trying to win a college football title running the triple-option. There is a longing for them and he misses them dearly. He’s not alone in that at all. ... 

“There is a certain solemnity to being here,” he says. “I’ll admit it’s challenging to help lead through this because there’s no real guidebook to consult. I mean, you’re experiencing kids that are making grown-men decisions for the first time in their lives.” 

There are people of varying ages who are cleaning up yards and, by all accounts, the Jeff Davis community is very strong. There are the standard mental health concerns, though, that go along with all the day-to-day. It’s the first time that people may be without cell phones and other forms of communication for going on two weeks. Contact with loved ones is at a minimum, at best. It’s been challenging and rewarding for Helton and others to see how the younger people they see are responding to all  Hurricane Helene left behind. 

I ask Helton to describe his situation. 

“I’m juggling,” he offers. “I’m a property owner, a neighbor, a husband and a dad, and a father figure to 60. And they’re all unique situations.” 

He mentions a family that is trying to rebound from losing four chicken houses and six-figures worth of chickens that are missing. He mentions a family that had a tire blow out on the only family car belonging to a grandmother. The student found a golf cart to drive into town to find a tire to replace the blowout ... and drove back.

Lance is trying to meet the needs of everyone in his orbit as best he can -- being all these different versions of himself. He’s also quick to credit everyone in the community that he sees (and doesn’t get the chance to see) and everyone at the school- administrators on down -- who are all pitching in to meet the needs that are shown every day in the county.   

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Buses were loaded with food for distribution throughout the area.

Credit: Jeff Davis Facebook

Help is coming from the outside as well. Bleckley County’s FCA drove as much water over as they could transport, and former Jackets have driven supplies in from Atlanta to help out when they can.  

The game on Friday night on campus will remind everyone that “when you wear navy, you’re as good as gold.” It won’t matter if the columns that welcome you into the stadium grounds are down. It won’t matter if the fence is makeshift instead of permanent. The community “that got shook for a second,” as Lance says, will have some time to step away for a bit with a bitter rival that got hit just as hard as they did. 

“What’s the saying … You laugh so you don’t cry? It’s been heavy in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of hurting here. This will go outside the lines of Jeff Davis County and we’ll all get to celebrate something with a group of people that have been working on solutions and are still doing that.”      

It might be another week before power is restored to acceptable levels. Obviously, there’s no school in session. There’s still damage assessment to educational infrastructure. And you still are having to process everything you’ll need just to figure out how to manage getting “back” to school. There’s all those things we don’t think about (power, food, internet, temperature control, proper housing) until we have to think about them. And, if there’s no power, you can’t even do virtual learning. 

“We do have some tentative dates for returns,” Helton says. “But, at the same time, the kids need for us just to love them as best we can. We’re trying to give a sense of normalcy here and trying to meet the needs at the student body all at the same time.” That includes making sure contact can be as constant as possible even if it’s through Chef Helton and the Grilling Crew for two meals and moving practice times to midday.  

The last thing you need is to try to find your way home at dusk under current conditions. 

“We’re trying to provide as much structure as we can considering. And while athletics is about wins and losses on the field, a lot of this has to do with preserving the outlet itself. You have athletes from all these different socioeconomic backgrounds that come together for common goals. If we can help them be as safe as we can make them on a daily basis, we need to do the things we can to help provide that outlet for them all. 

“It’s been a wild deal,” he says. Of that, I have no doubt for everyone that Helene decided to introduce herself to a few weeks ago.  

At this point of the conversation, I can tell Coach Helton is tired. I worry about keeping him from his XBox and his crash time in the Jeff Davis Dorm Room. He has to be up at 6. 

“It’s really been awesome to see kids smiling when we see them. Us adults may not know their individual burdens. But I think it shows what the outlet of athletics can give.”   

He also admitted something about what the outlet has done in return... 

“In a way, I probably needed the storm,” he admits. “It reminds me of what a servant is supposed to be. I’ll tell you I have never been more fulfilled than when I was running our fieldhouse as a soup kitchen to help out everyone here.  

“With what I’ve seen with our team here at Jeff Davis, we have a group of resilient and tough young men who will be future leaders. They’ve been put in the most uncomfortable situations you could experience. They’ve rolled their sleeves up and all the moments they’ve spent in the huddle with their teammates, I think, are helping them through this. 

“I’ll tell you this, with everything I’ve seen with the young women and men here in the last few weeks, this county has got leaders. This county will be in good shape for years to come.” 

With that, I think Lance switched me to his Bluetooth (or his speakerphone -- one direction to the other) and I left him to his next game as Ball State chases a Natty.

His alarm is going off in eight hours to get to grilling as Jeff Davis continues to get back to the field in 2024. …

Play it safe, everyone... I’ll see you soon!