Marc Lamont has been inspiring local football players for 30 years
LocalSportsJournal.com
Marc Lamont just loves to be part of the team. And he takes his job VERY seriously.
“My job is to get the water bottles ready,” explained Marc, who is now 50 years old.
“Then I watch them play. When they take a break, I give them the water.”
Yes, Marc is a waterboy - and he’s darn proud of it.
Marc, who has Down’s Syndrome, has been doing his part on Muskegon-area high school football fields on and off for the last 30-plus years, at Muskegon and now Mona Shores. He has always worked with his former teacher at South Shores and current Sailors’ junior varsity assistant coach Nick Davros.
“I just asked him one day, ‘Hey Marc, do you want to be a waterboy?” recalled Davros. “He was all excited and said yes right away. I don’t know if he even knew what I was taking about, because he didn’t have a big interest in sports, but he definitely had an interest in being around the other kids.”
For every high school sports star like Brady Rose, there are two or three others behind the scenes like Marc - some do stats, some help with filming, others take care of equipment and some, yes, are waterboys.
Mona Shores head coach Matt Koziak said that people like Marc, and the joy he gets from being part of the program, proves that the magic of high school football goes far beyond just the kids running for touchdowns on Friday nights.
“This is why high school football is so great,” said Mona Shores coach Matt Koziak, whose team is 5-0 and ranked No. 2 in the state in Division 2. “He can’t play the game, but there are still ways that he can be involved.
“Marc’s loved football for so long and we are glad to have him around. The kids love him.”
A special connection
Joella Lamont, Marc’s mother, was a longtime physical education teacher and coach at Muskegon Public Schools.
Joella and her husband, Tom, who died in 1988 at the age of 42 (Marc was 14), were determined to raise Marc like any other child, which was radical thinking back in the mid-1970s.
“Back then, Down’s kids weren’t included in anything normal,” said Joella, who also has a daughter, Lisa, who is three years younger than Marc. “We always made it a point to have Marc around the other kids as much as possible. He’s had a great life.”
Marc was the first Down’s Syndrome student at Muskegon Heights and later at Mona Shores, where he attended South Shores and was part of the Muskegon Area Learning Program.
It was during his time as a student at South Shores in the early 1990s that he met Davros, a special education teacher who is now in his 47th year of coaching high school football.
“I told his mother that I was coaching at Muskegon and that I would like to have Marc as my water boy,” said Davros. “Then I asked her if that was OK with her.”
Joella gave an enthusiastic “yes,” which started more than a 30-year relationship and forged a special bond between Nick and Marc.
On game days, Joella would drop off Marc at the stadium and then Nick would bring him home after the game.
“The thing that I have noticed through the years is the impact Marc has had on the other kids,” said Davros. “They look at his struggles, compared to what they have been blessed with, and Marc always has a great attitude.
“So, what do they have to complain about?”
Part of the team
Marc used to be quite athletic and active, competing in the Special Olympics for years in basketball, floor hockey and track & field, but age and health issues have slowed him down drastically. These days, he mostly stays on the sidelines and supports his team during games.
“He used to swim laps in the pool forever, now he just sits on a raft and I push him around,” said Joella. “He is in pain most of the time, which is really very sad.”
Marc gets regular shots in his neck, shoulders and knees to ease the pain, but, as he said with a sigh, “my body is falling apart on me.”
While his condition has limited him physically, Marc remains very active in his church, Anchor Point Bible Church in Norton Shores, where his 50th birthday party was held last year.
These days, when Nick picks him up or his mom drops him off on game days, Marc serves in mostly a ceremonious role - fist-bumping the players on the sidelines, getting to ride in the golf cart and maybe getting tossed a celebratory Pepsi after the game.
He really enjoyed being able to go out to the center of the field last year with Coach Nick for the pregame coin flip.
Then, after the final game of the season last fall, Shores head junior varsity coach Mike Koziak presented Marc with his very own Mona Shores jersey (No. 11), which was signed by the entire team and presented to him on the field.
That jersey is now one of Marc’s most prized possessions (along with his life-size poster of WWE star John Cena), and he loves to show off his jersey to friends and family.
“I love Coach Nick and his teams,” explained Marc. “I wait until they are done playing and then I talk to them. They are all very nice to me.”
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