ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 6, 1996 TAG: 9612060017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
The inflowing tide of telephone calls to the Brookville High football coach had reached flood stage this week, and the Bees boss was obliged to have the office ladies run some screens for him.
"A lot of it is coaches recruiting Lomax,'' Mark Lineburg said of big James, Brookville's 6-foot-5, 245 prodigy of a tight end and linebacker. "Wonder if those coaches would mind me calling and hanging around the week they're preparing for the national championship?''
Brookville is playing for a state championship, which is as high a distinction as any Group AA Division 3 team from this commonwealth is ever going to have. The week a high school plays for a state crown, everybody has something to say to the coach. Some of it he may be interested in.
Lineburg is a veteran coach of five of the toughest campaigns in the Seminole District, maybe the single most breakneck, canine-eat-canine AA league in the whole commonwealth. A man who goes eyeball to coaching eyeball with sideline wise men such as Bob Christmas of Jefferson Forest, Mike Scharnus of Liberty, and Bob Gray of Staunton River better have his X's and O's neatly positioned on the page.
Anybody who must answer to a constituency in the boiler room of football wealthy Lynchburg better have a vertical spine and a level gaze.
Only a hard-headed coaching veteran can handle that kind of stress and Lineburg, of the Radford Lineburgs, is that.
At age 27.
Now Lineburg, the son of Radford High coaching legend Norman Lineburg, has his boys in the state championship, where they meet James Monroe of football factory Fredericksburg on Saturday at neutral Spotsylvania. James Monroe has great football tradition and it has tailback Terrell Parker, whose advances from scrimmage have covered some 2,600 yards so far this season. That total was enhanced by a 43-carry, 405-yard afternoon in the 28-21 Region I final victory over Bruton.
Brookville answers with a team that Lineburg says is efficient, not flashy. For comparisons, he goes back to the Darwin Herdman-Joey Poff-Todd Walters Blacksburg teams that he played against when he was a Bobcat in the mid-1980s.
"Good defense and a lot of really solid players," he said.
Radford's black and gold heart was broken by those Blacksburg teams, which twice went to the state championship, beating Radford in a memorable Region IV final one of the years.
Lineburg may have been the youngest coach in the state when he took over at Brookville as a 23-year-old. The Bees had and have a storied program. With former Radford quarterback Kenny Alderman as coach in 1988, Brookville cranked maybe the best team Christiansburg has had in the state semifinals. Brookville lost the next week and hasn't been this far since.
Lineburg is aware of that legacy and he's felt the pressure of his position while going 37-16. A couple of years back, one of his teams got so hot in the second half of the season that it scored on every possession for five-straight games. But it didn't make the playoffs.
"I know how hard it is to get this far,'' he said.
Norman Lineburg has won two state championships and has scattered coaching seeds throughout the land. All four Lineburg boys are in coaching, Robert as a basketball assistant at Southern Methodist, Wayne as an aide with William and Mary football, and Paul at Cave Spring High.
Robert and Wayne will be on the road with their teams this weekend and won't be at Spotsylvania. Paul and the boys' parents will be there to support the family's second-oldest as he stalks the Brookville sideline.
Mark and his father have been talking regularly by telephone in recent days, which certainly must spark memories for both. Those conversations have brought to mind for Mark his father's football lessons as well as those of a couple of other former Bobcats assistant coaches, Buddy Shull and Tommy Hise.
"We have to win this game," Mark said. "If we can, I feel like we will be winning for guys like Buddy and Tommy, who worked so hard at Radford and fell just a hair short of a championship."
What about the head coach of those teams?
"Him too," said his son Mark.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB