In 1989 Renzie Lamb wore his high school football helmet to fire up the Ephs so they would record the 1st perfect season at Williams -- 8-0-0

Renzie Lamb represents a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

He was and is a successful coach, a mentor, a marine.

But above all else, Lamb is a master storyteller. And does he have some stories to tell.

As an assistant coach on the Williams College football team from 1968 until 2003, Lamb used to recite this beauty each week before the traditional Amherst-Williams showdown on the gridiron:

“If you want to be happy for an hour, get intoxicated.

If you want to be happy for three days, get married.

If you want to be happy for eight days, kill your pig and eat it.

If you want to be happy forever, beat Amherst.”

“Someone down in Florida gave me a fishing plaque with that on it, only it ended with “Go fishing,” recalled Lamb. “I was doing the radio show at the [Williams] Quarterback Club one year and I wanted to end up with a bang. I just changed it from go fishing to beat Amherst.”

If Lamb’s name sounds familiar, it should. It also adorns the new artificial-turf field parallel to Weston Field. The field was dedicated in his name in October of 2004.

Lamb was the head men’s lacrosse coach at Williams from 1968 until 2003. His Ephs appeared in nine consecutive ECAC Tournaments and won the New England Div. II-III crowns in 1973 and 1979. The Ephs also won the 1994 New England Div. III crown. He produced 30 lacrosse All-Americans at Williams and retired with a 260-183-2 (.587) record.

He also served as the head women’s squash coach at the school from 1977 until 1987 and guided them to a 73-44 mark (.624) and six Little 3 titles.

Having been around the Amherst-Williams rivalry, Lamb has a special appreciation for the annual showdown. “Up until 1988, the game always meant something to me because it was the only one I saw every year,” he said. “I was always out scouting for the other games during the season. It used to be that Amherst and Williams would play each other in all sports on the same weekend in early November. Now, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the football game. A lot of the spirit is engendered into the football game because it’s the end of the fall season.”

Lamb is back in town amongst familiar surroundings of this week’s game. But each fall since his “retirement” he has traveled to Annapolis, Md., to be an assistant coach for the Naval Academy’s sprint (145-pound) football team. There Lamb has joined the staff of one of the thousands of kids he coached while at Williams, Major Jerome Rizzo. In a story of perfect irony, Lamb once housed Rizzo while he was a student at Williams, allowing him to live in his house for two summers. This fall, Lamb took up residence in the basement of Rizzo’s home. “You know, going down to Annapolis has been good for me, it’s given me a chance to get away from a place I’ve spent 37 years and get emotionally involved in something else,” Lamb said. “All the kids I coached have graduated from here (Williams), and the kids down there have no idea who I am — I walk around and they think I’m a retired admiral or something.”

When Lamb first started coaching at Williams, it was still an all-male college. He had no idea he’d one day be coaching a women’s squash team — he didn’t know anything about squash either — but said that experience was one of his fondest memories from Williams.

“It’s the most rewarding professional experience I’ve ever had,” Lamb said.

“I had never coached women and I had never coached an individual sport — that really filled me in.”

Lamb was one of the old throwback coaches who never stopped all year long. Especially after he started coaching women’s squash. In September he would coach football, and for a two-week period at the end of the season, he would coach football and women’s squash. The squash season would go until the beginning of March, and by then he would have been coaching squash and men’s lacrosse at the same time for a few weeks.

But instead of getting burned out, Lamb was excited about the constant workload.

“It was Sept. 1 every day until May 15th,” he laughed. “But back then everybody did multiple sports. What was great about it was the experiences never ended. It was exciting, the kids really appreciated what you did. It was a full day, but it was very rewarding.”

Some of the most memorable games in the Amherst-Williams rivalry in football remain imbedded in the veteran coach’s brain. He rattled off several contests, including the 1997 48-46 Williams win when first-year Collin Vataha kicked a game-winning field goal in the waning seconds; the infamous “mud bowl” of 1995 when the two teams —playing on a saturated and torn up Weston Field that was covered in sawdust — finished in a 0-0 tie; and the 1996 game when the Ephs drove 98 yards over the final five minutes to upset the Lord Jeffs in Amherst, 19-13.

“Of course, then there was that game in the 80s when we were behind something like 47-0 at halftime,” he said.

There are plenty of stories around in which Lamb has been credited with turning a student-athletes life around. Some were quite planned, some the coach said, happened strictly by accident. Several of those testimonies came last season at the dedication ceremony for

what is now called Renzie Lamb Field. For his part, Lamb has said he’s been approached to write a book on his experiences at Williams.

Certainly a worthy effort for the master storyteller.

“I don’t know,” Lamb said. “Many of these stories came from my experiences — and when you’re an old coach, you remember the players from every year, you remember their uniform number, but all of a sudden they are all playing in the same game from the same year.

“That’s the way it is in coaching, you draw from your every day experiences. I never woke up in the morning and said, “Today, I’m going to tell a great story.”