Their golden season

A distraught teenage boy with tears streaming down his face makes his way, slowly, to the middle of the pitch inside Hardy Talton Stadium — stopping to rest his head on his coach’s chest.

Rich Huff knows all about the agony of defeat in pursuit of a championship.

Decades ago, long before he signed on to manage the Charles B. Aycock soccer team, he experienced the emotion as a player.

So, he put his hands on the top of the young man’s head before, a few moments later, urging him stand with that same head held high.

A few seconds pass and another player collapses into the coach’s arms — this one a senior who has just seen his high school career come to a devastating end after a dream season that had, until Tuesday, seen the Golden Falcons go undefeated and advance to the school’s first-ever Regional Championship game.

The two, briefly, embrace before the teenager moves on.

But Huff stands his ground.

He is waiting for one particular player — his star player — who, the moment the final horn sounded on a 2-1 loss to defending State Champion Western Alamance, ran off the pitch to find and hug his pastor.

And when, at last, their eyes meet, the coach moves from his spot to initiate what would be his longest embrace of the evening.

The young man puts his head on Huff’s shoulder — trying to remain stoic while those around him are lost in tears.

He doesn’t break when he tries to back away and his leader pulls him back in.

But when Huff whispers something into his player’s ear, tears form in the young man’s eyes.

That moment was not about a condolence offering from a coach — a reminder to perhaps the best player in the history of Aycock’s program that he had more soccer left ahead of him after graduation this spring.

It was another chance for a father to reassure his son that he had made him proud.

The fact that Drew Huff was able to meet his father at midfield at the conclusion of Tuesday’s game was, in many ways, a testament to the young man Rich raised him to be.

Early in the contest, the father had to, literally, help carry Aycock’s striker off the field after he found himself on the receiving end of a tough foul that looked like it had sidelined one of the best players in the state for the remainder of the evening.

But when Drew, a few minutes later, hobbled to the sideline to sub back in, those who knew him were not surprised.

In fact, a little more than 24 hours before the game began, he talked to Wayne Week about the fact that he had, particularly during the Golden Falcons’ playoff run, been targeted by opposing teams — forcing him to play “beat up.”

“That comes from my dad. My dad was the type of guy on the field where he doesn’t care. He gets hit, he gets back up, no matter what,” Drew said. “Stitches, bleeding, nose broken, he’s the guy who doesn’t know what a hospital is. So, I feel like as I’m getting older, I’m starting to realize that I need to become a man. Say something happens at my job that knocks me down. I can’t just sit there. I’ve got to get back up and keep going.”

That is the difference between the relationship he and other players have with their coach.

All of them are “family,” Rich said — with each young man feeling like a son with whom he shares the same level of honesty and trust.

But he knows that the lessons he feels he has been fortunate enough to teach Drew, through a lifetime of sharing a game they both love, will be ones the young man will carry with him off the pitch for the rest of his life.

And the fact that his son has that perspective means more to Rich to than any championship.

“Seeing his sportsmanship and his maturity and watching the growth in his character has been a special thing to be a part of,” he said. “He’s a leader. He shows what it takes to be a leader. And at his age, it’s incredible to see and makes me just so proud.”

The day before the Regional Final, both Rich and Drew acknowledged that winning, once a team reaches the Final Four, can often come down to things players and coaches can’t control.

Every team remaining in the tournament is “really good,” Rich said.

And often times, the result comes down to a single whistle, an untimely injury, or a kick that misses its mark by inches.

So, both knew that Tuesday’s outcome was a possibility.

And Rich knew something else — that should Aycock lose, the young men he had helped lead to four consecutive conference championships and the greatest season in their school’s history, would play that loss over and over again in their heads, just as he has since he, as a player long before they were born, came up short in a state championship game.

But the Golden Falcons, should they come up short, would still be lucky, Rich said, because the game that earned them a Final Four berth was “crazy.”

So, that, too, would be an unforgettable memory — one that would offset, with the euphoria it would allow them to relive, the pain that would come with a loss with a title shot on the line.

Montgomery Central had only lost one game all season.

And early in the contest, on the road in front of a raucous crowd in Pikeville, they punched in two goals and taunted the Golden Falcons faithful.

“It was the first time all season we had been down,” Rich said. “And this wasn’t one goal. We were down two.”

But then, an Aycock player got fouled in the box and Drew was called on to take the penalty kick.

“I knew that if I missed this goal, we were going to be in a deeper hole — that we could be in trouble,” he said.

Fortunately, one of his brothers made sure that wasn’t going to happen.

“He said, ‘Take a deep breath. You’ve got this,’” Drew said.

And with his father watching from the sideline — the man who had told him after several failed PKs this season to “go back to your bread and butter and no goalie can stop you” — he “buried it.”

“I knew as soon as I scored that goal, the momentum shifted,” the young man said.

He was right.

Less than two minutes later, Aycock tied the game — a contest that turned into a 102-minute overtime thriller, with CBA winning on a golden goal before its fans rushed the field.

“They’ll remember that game for the rest of their lives,” Rich said. “Those boys, this school, this community, we all will.”

Years from now, few will remember who won the 5A Regional Championship on a mild Pikeville evening Nov. 18, 2025.

But Drew will never forget the journey of experiencing his historic senior season alongside his father.

“It feels like this season hasn’t been real. It’s been a dream,” he said. “I’ve been living in a dream.”

And through soccer, he has learned what really matters in life — brotherhood, community, friendship, family, and faith.

So, he will hold on to the fact that 16 out of the 23 members of the Golden Falcons squad go to church together on Sundays.

“God came with this team,” Drew said.

He will remember how his school — how Pikeville — rallied around soccer for, perhaps, the first time ever.

“I’m glad we were able to show this community that at Charles B. Aycock, there’s not just a football team,” he said. “I feel like people will talk about this season for the next five years at Aycock.”

And he hopes that decades down the road, long after he hangs up his cleats, that he has the chance to relive what happened on the pitch this season with his own family.

“It’ll be a crazy story to tell my kids, to say I had my dad as my coach and was so successful,” Drew said. “It’s a blessing. Hopefully, one day I can coach my kid the way he has coached me.”

For Rich, nothing could be sweeter than knowing his son has that perspective.

“It brings a tear to my eye,” he said. “I’m just proud — not just for Drew, but for this community and for this school. What these boys did this year, it’s unheard of. It really is unheard of.”

And when he decides to pass the torch — to hang it up as a manager and mark the end of a soccer career that has seen him win state titles as a player and coach and take to overseas pitches — he will hold on to the memories made not between player and coach, but as father and son.

“Nobody can take this away from me, no matter what happens to me in life. We’ll remember that (Montgomery Central) game in overtime. We’ll remember this season,” Rich said. “We’ll remember those moments for the rest of our lives.”