Coach Doug Preston holds his son Collin at football practice when Preston was the head coach at Rowan County in 2003.

It was Aug. 19, 2000. Doug Preston was an assistant coach for Garrard County as the team played in the Constitution Bowl in Danville.

His wife, Jessica, went into labor late in the fourth quarter and Collin Preston was born in the early hours of Aug. 20.

It started with football and hasn’t stopped.

Today, Collin is a defensive end for the Doug Preston-coached Franklin-Simpson Wildcats and for the second straight season, the father and son will share a special memory of participating in another state championship game. Franklin-Simpson is back in the 4A state final for a rematch against Johnson Central at the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. CT.

Back to the Constitution Bowl.

As the story goes, Jessica went into labor with five minutes left in the fourth quarter and held on to the end of the game before going to the hospital. By that moment, it probably didn’t matter that Garrard County lost that game 31-10 to open the regular season.

What matters today, 17 years later, is who beat Garrard County.

It was Franklin-Simpson.

“It’s kind of fate that my dad would be playing Franklin-Simpson the day I was born and we’re going to a state championship for the same team,” Collin said.

Collin has turned in a 99-tackle season – third most on the team – on the Franklin-Simpson defensive line that has allowed just 38.9 rushing yards per game. As a sophomore last year, he had 87 tackles and three fumble recoveries in the Wildcats’ 4A state runner-up season.

Father and son agree that they’ve done a good job of not bringing football home with them after two-hour practices most afternoons in the fall. But for a coach that’s been on the sideline for two decades, it took adjustment to go from football coach to also sharing the father title on the sideline.

“It’s really fun to watch and see that development,” Doug Preston said. “He’s always been around it of course. The hard part for me is when he first got into high school I had to really overcome – and it surprised me, to be honest – seeing him up close get hits and give hits. Often he’s lined up on guys that are 50 to 70 pounds bigger than him because of where he plays. He’s really aggressive and plays hard. It’s really neat to watch him play because he’s pretty tenacious.”

Collin said it was difficult to separate his home life and practice life with his dad, but said they’ve become closer in the past three years with the same goal in mind.

“When it’s the season, of course we’re going to talk about football all the time because it’s one of the only things that matters to him right now and it’s the most important thing to me right now,” Collin said. “He understands me and I understand him. But sometimes we just like to sit down and get it out of our faces and have fun watching a TV show or going out to eat.”

The relationship has hardly been noticed by teammates. Senior defensive lineman Dion Pearson said he knows Coach Preston “is going to play the best of the best and Collin fits the picture this year.”

The younger Preston recalls hearing his dad tell his teammates when they were eighth-graders they would get to the state championship two or three times when they reached high school.

“Here we are and it’s an awesome feeling to share that bond with him and to know that we’ve been talking about that for a long time,” Doug said.

Even this season when Franklin-Simpson was 2-3, Collin tried calling his father’s bluff and he made the claim again. Franklin-Simpson hasn’t lost since, and now winning a state championship has replaced the previous goal of simply making it to the final.

Of all the pictures the father and son – or coach and player – have together through Collin’s career, posing on Kroger Field with a championship trophy would be hard to top.

“There are a lot of good pictures that show us together in the state game last year and in the semifinals last year against John Hardin,” Collin said. “There’s probably going to be another good photo of us this year, but the pictures don’t do it justice. There’s nothing like playing for this person who has mentored you all your life on their dream, which has now become my dream.”{&end}