There is disbelief, and then there is whatever the Newport football team was left feeling after its gut-wrenching 38-35 loss to Bellarmine Prep in the first round of the 4A state football tournament.

After building a 21-0 lead in the first half and holding a two-score advantage with less than four minutes to play, the Knights saw momentum swing and the Lions ride the wave of emotion, scoring the game’s final 17 points to win on a field goal with only seconds remaining.

The final moments are ones Newport players and coaches won’t soon forget, as they lament a handful of near-misses and what-ifs.

But thanks to a simple gesture, one young fan will recall the game for far different reasons.

As players trudged back to the locker room, many still wearing their helmets and with forlorn looks scrawled across their faces, a young boy walked the opposite way with a piece of cardboard and a pen.

When he saw senior running back Conner Baumann, he stopped.

No player signified the agonizing emotion of the loss better than the ball carrying bull-moose that is Baumann, who some on Twitter took to calling, “Beastman” in homage the “Beastmode” moniker Seahawks’ running back Marshawn Lynch has made famous.

He threw aside would-be tacklers and ran right over the top of others on his first touchdown in the quarterfinals, spending his afternoon as the unstoppable force to Bellarmine Prep’s immovable object. When he didn’t find running lanes, he made his own. When the Lions were out of position and unable to clear through the wash of Newport’s massive offensive linemen, he went the distance.

But when the final horn sounded, with a last-second Hail Mary falling short and incomplete, Baumann was left with the reality of a prep career ended at least one week too soon.

Then he saw a little boy with a pen and piece of cardboard.

The six-year-old son of Newport boys basketball coach Steve Haizlip, himself a proud alum who led his team to the 4A Hardwood Classic last year, Milo was just as emotional as the players he idolized as the game ended.

“Milo is very passionate about sports,” Haizlip said. “He really loves the players, basketball and football.”

All of Haizlip’s three sons, but especially Milo, have grown fond of hearing their father talk about the young men he works with in the basketball program and those he knows from other sports at the school. But more than setting screens and playing sound defense, Haizlip said he focuses on the character behind the players.

When Milo handed Baumann the scrap of cardboard and pen, that character came out.

It took him only a brief few seconds to scrawl his name and hand the signature back to his young fan, but in that moment, Baumann stood for everything prep coaches in all sports strive to build.

As the school year comes to a close months from now, sending seniors on a new beginning in their lives, Newport’s graduates will certainly remember their final prep football game.

Thanks to a gesture as simple as signing his name, Baumann made sure Milo Haizlip will too.

For the Love of the Game is a Bellevue Reporter column by sports reporter Josh Suman.