Kenny Browning, who may have been the best high school football coach ever in North Carolina, once said senior leadership was too important to leave entirely to seniors.

The long-time Northern Durham coach, now a UNC assistant coach, said leaders sometimes have to be made, and you don't wait until they are 12th-graders to begin the process.

"If you rely on players to know how to lead, what are you going to do during a season when you don't have that great natural leader," he said. "One of a coach's jobs is teaching leadership."

Former East Wake coach Johnny Sasser once compared creating leaders to molding quarterbacks.

"I'm the coach," the late Sasser said. "It is my job to develop quarterbacks. We're going to run this offense, and we've got to have a quarterback to do that.

"The same with leaders. If I'm doing my job right, I'm building leaders from the first day."

There are all sorts of ways to lead a team, of course.

Josh Adams, now a standout running back at Wake Forest, led by accomplishment. Repeatedly, Adams rallied Cary to victory during his senior season in 2005.

Sanderson's Keven Painter inspired his teammates by never complaining about his continual hip pain.

And how can you complain about being hot or tired or sore when your quarterback has undergone 10 operations like Southeast Raleigh's 2006 quarterback Russell Joyce?

How can you not value the opportunity to play when you realize that E. J. Morris of East Wake never missed a practice in three years, despite three hip surgeries that kept him out of every game.

Patrick Watkins, a former Major League Baseball player, said he learned about leadership when he was at East Carolina.

He was tired and not looking forward to baseball practice when he sat down across from another student to eat lunch.

The young man saw Watkins' practice gear and began talking about his love of baseball.

It must be wonderful, he said, to go out and run and throw and hit. It must be wonderful to play college baseball.

Yeah, right, Watkins thought as he left the table.

Then he realized his lunch mate was sitting in a wheelchair.

"I understood a little more how precious it was to be able to play," Watkins said.

The best high school leader I ever saw was current Smithfield-Selma coach Anthony Barbour, when he was at Garner in 1987.

Barbour, one of the team's hardest workers in practice, was modest to a fault, and his unselfishness set him apart.

After Garner beat Charlotte Harding 40-21 in the state championship game, Barbour went to each teammate and thanked him. He had run for 265 yards and scored four touchdowns, but he thanked them.

Barbour says what he remembers best from his high school days were the runs of his teammates, touchdown catches by others and the team's defense.

He set a state record for rushing that season and broke the national record for rushing touchdowns, but the most important thing to him was his teammates.

He never danced in an end zone, never strutted, never thumped his chest. He always was thankful for his teammates.

He loved his teammates, which might be the best way to be a great leader.

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