Termie Land was head of school at Lamar from 2000-03, and he considers three things his greatest accomplishments during that span: getting the school on the city sewer system, starting an annual fund and hiring Mac Barnes.

Barnes turned the Lamar football program into an MAIS powerhouse, winning six state championships before retiring after this past season. When Land, now head of school at Madison-Ridgeland Academy, found out Barnes was set to retire, he thought to himself how good an opportunity the opening would be for his son Jacob Land to finally get a head coaching job.

Wednesday afternoon, Termie Land was back at Lamar watching Jacob Land get introduced for that very position, a full-circle moment for the long-time school administrator.

“It’s thrilling to me,” Termie Land said. “I’m so proud of the job he’s done over the years growing and maturing and preparing to be a head coach in order for him to get an opportunity like this.”

Jacob Land was a student at Lamar during his father’s tenure as head of school and remembers the hiring of Barnes. At the time, he couldn’t have known he would one day succeed Barnes as the school’s football coach, but Jacob Land said the foundation Barnes built made the Lamar job an attractive one as a first-time head coach.

“One of the first things my dad wanted to do was make sure the football team was successful and hire a really successful football coach, and that was Mac Barnes,” Jacob Land recalled. “I remember as a young child how excited people were to get a guy who had been so successful at Meridian High School.”

Barnes was hired by Termie Land after Barnes coached at Meridian from 1978-1997.

“He’s Mr. Meridian,” Termie Land said of Barnes. “He was the star quarterback and came back and was a highly successful coach at Meridian High School. When I had the opportunity to visit him my first year here, he had gotten out of coaching but still had the itch to coach, so I asked him if he’d be interested in coming over to Lamar School, and he said that he was. He still had that competitiveness, and I’m sure he’s still competitive today.”

Jacob Land spent this past season as offensive coordinator for MRA, which won the MAIS Class 6A state title under head coach Herbert Davis. He previously coached in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and also for Ricky Black at Jackson Prep during multiple state championship seasons at Prep in a five-year span.

“It’s surreal,” Jacob Land said about returning to Lamar. “I always knew Lamar would be an unbelievable place to be a head football coach because of the administration first, the facilities and the community. They’ve always had great athletes and a good football program, and a lot of that is due to Coach Barnes, so it’s exciting.”

His experiences working under coaches like Black and Davis helped prepare him for one day becoming a head coach himself, Jacob Land said.

“Ricky Black is one of the best men I’ve ever met in my life,” Jacob Land said. “He treated me like a son and grew me up like a son and taught me a lot of hard lessons. Herbert Davis at MRA has been a mentor throughout my life. He coached me in high school football, and it was an honor to get back and coach with him this year.”

What stood out about them both was their attention to detail, Jacob Land said, which is something he wants to emulate now that he’s leading a football program.

“Their organization and instilling discipline and a hard work ethic in their football teams is really what I want to bring from those programs and instill here at Lamar,” Jacob Land said.

That experience is one of the main reasons Termie Land thinks his son is ready for the challenge of being a head coach.

“I don’t think there’s a better coach anywhere than Herbert Davis,” Termie Land said. “He stays up with the game, and he and Jacob worked well together. I think the ultimate compliment was that Coach Davis turned the offense over to Jacob during the season, so I think from an offensive standpoint Jacob has a great mind and sees the game well.”

Scoring points is what Jacob Land wants Raiders fans to expect from his teams.

“It’ll be very similar to what MRA does,” Jacob Land said. “I do like to throw the football since I was a quarterback in high school and college, so I do enjoy that aspect of it, but we’re also going to run the football as long as we feel like we have the angles and space to do that. There could be some times we go up tempo and some times where we slow it down, but we’re going to be exciting. We want to get the ball to several different people and attack the defenses in several different ways.”