Spur High School’s football season was almost over before it started - two days into preseason two-a-days.

Head coach Tate Clark had been battling illness since July. He’d gotten his gallbladder removed, then fought pancreatitis, and by early fall, had developed an infection in the pancreas that hospitalized him in Dallas, over four hours from the tiny west Texas town.

But Spur ISD had already downsized the coaching staff from three members last season to two this year, and Clark’s illness meant defensive coordinator Russell Conrad was alone. Spur superintendent Craig Hamilton had a choice: he could move the girls’ basketball coach to the football team, which wouldn’t be fair to the girls.

Or, he could step in as head coach.

Hamilton had vast experience with the six-man football Spur played. His family moved to Spur in 1980, and he graduated from the high school in 1993. In 28 years as an educator, he’d coached 11-man football at New Deal, Anton and Valley before taking a six-man job at Southland. 

Hamilton was out of football for nine years as Spur ISD’s superintendent, but he’d always dreamed of coaching his alma mater. He just hated the circumstances of how it had happened. 

But Clark had no issue handing off the team to Hamilton. The two had discussed a potential swap when Clark first fell ill, but now, with an extended stay in Dallas looming, Clark pictured his senior class returning to Spur in 20 years and remembering how their final year of football fizzled out because they didn’t have a coach. That mental image was enough to put his ego aside and let Hamilton take over. 

“The buy-in part (from the kids) was just trying to make them understand that I’m not trying to replace Coach Clark,” Hamilton said. “We’re all in this situation, right here. The problem is, we have to go on, and we have to move forward.”

Part of moving forward meant switching Clark’s offensive terminology for Hamilton’s. If Hamilton would call plays, he needed to do so with the playbook he’d used for decades. He and the players weren’t on the same page in the beginning - he’d introduce them to the ‘Zebra’ formation. They knew it as 'Red.' 

But when Spur beat Ira in Week 2 to move to 2-0,  the players were all in. The previous year, they’d endured a 2-8 season marred by injuries. The same group of kids (Spur lost one senior to graduation) was experiencing different results.

Clark kept up with each week’s win from his hospital room, streaming the games on the NFHS Network or receiving text updates from the teaching staff’s group message. Every Friday morning, he’d send a good luck text to each player, and they’d respond by asking for updates on his recovery or sending prayers.  

“It’s awesome to know that kids have those hearts that you’d imagine adults would be able to have,” Clark said. 

Clark was released from the hospital before Spur’s midseason game against undefeated Paducah and drove to see his team play in person for the first time. He texted some of the teachers in the staff group that he was in the stands, hoping to keep it a secret from the players until after the game. But it’s hard to hide at a 1A high school football game, and the players quickly swarmed toward the stands to greet their coach.

Spur came from behind to beat Paducah 67-56, earning Channel 11’s ‘Team of the Week.’

By the time Clark was ready to return to teaching full-time, Spur was 6-0. They couldn’t switch the playbook back midseason, so Clark has attended all games in the pressbox while Hamilton remains acting head coach, once again putting the team above his personal title. 

“The kids are very loyal to Coach (Clark),” Hamilton said. “But Coach Clark has been very loyal to our kids.”

While the wins have been nice, the more rewarding part for Hamilton is putting the whistle around his neck again and building young men.

“As tough as it’s been trying to manage both jobs for those two-and-a-half to three hours a day that we’re out there practicing, I just get the opportunity to focus on the kids,” Hamilton said. “That’s something that is lost when you’re not with them all the time.”

One of those kids is his son, senior JD Hamilton. Craig says he used to watch film and talk football with JD’s older brother, Cory, who graduated two years ago. Getting to coach JD has opened that line of communication with his youngest son.

“I’ve been wanting to be coached by him ever since I was little,” JD said.

Hamilton has Spur one win away from its first undefeated regular season since 1994, the year after he graduated. Throughout this fall, that vision he and Clark feared of the players returning in 20 years to remember their lost season has morphed into a story of triumph over a 2-8 season and a sidelined coach. And that’s a lesson the players will take with them for the rest of their lives.

“Things get tough, and sometimes you just have to step up and put your chin down and go to work,” Hamilton said. “That’s been a real testament to our young people here in Spur.”