Irwin County football coach Buddy Nobles won his first state title earlier this month in one of the most touching moments of the Georgia high school season.
Now, Nobles’ son has won a championship. Kaleb Nobles is the director of football operations for West Florida, which defeated Minnesota State 48-40 on Saturday in the NCAA Division II championship game.
"My dad has stage four cancer right now, so for him to win a state championship last Saturday and then for us to win it today is the best week in our lives," Kaleb Nobles said as quoted by The Florida Times-Union. "You couldn't write a better story than that."
Kaleb Nobles played high school football in Georgia at Fitzgerald, where Buddy Nobles was an offensive coordinator and Kaleb an all-state quarterback in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Kaleb signed with and played two seasons for Valdosta State before transferring to West Florida in 2016 and becoming the Jacksonville school’s first starting quarterback. He became the program’s quarterbacks coach in 2017 and director of football operations in 2018.
Buddy Nobles, a Florida native, became head coach at Irwin County in 2014. His teams won five region titles and fell short in four state finals before breaking through this season with a 56-14 victory over Marion County to win the Class A private-school title.
Nobles, diagnosed with cancer in the summer, continued to coach on a platform built for him by the school.
“This is a team of destiny,” Nobles said after winning Irwin’s first state title since 1975. “If there is a better Class A team in the history of Georgia high school football, I want to see them.”
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