SPARTANBURG, S.C. - The final score read South Carolina 24, North Carolina 16. It should have. After 60 minutes of play on Saturday at Gibbs Stadium, the Sandlappers proved to have the more talented squad.

Try as they could, the Tarheels couldn't keep the shifty backs from down south in check for more than a half. University of South Carolina recruit Stephon Gilmore and Duke recruit Walter Canty led their team in rallying from a 16-3 halftime deficit and notching win No. 40 in the 72-year old series for the South.

It wasn't the end Clayton High head coach Gary Fowler, who served as head coach of the North Carolina squad this year, wanted.

After all, nearly everything he'd hoped would happen during Shrine Bowl week for his North Carolina team had happened.

They'd quickly jelled on the practice squad, in the many restaurants they visited and in the halls of the Radisson hotel they called home. Heck, they'd even taken to the up-tempo, hard-hitting practices Fowler and the North Carolina coaching staff knew would be important come Saturday afternoon.

"It was something to see," said longtime Clayton High volunteer Jimmy Benson, who made the trip to South Carolina to assist the North Carolina squad this week. "Our guys would start the goal line drill and there was some real hitting going on. South Carolina hadn't been doing anything like that in their practices.

"One day we went into goal line drills and they [South Carolina's team] just stopped what they were doing and watched us."

The two teams practiced mostly side-by-side at the amazing Spartanburg High School campus all week.

There were a few scraps between teammates at times during the week but by Thursday afternoon, they'd all realized it was for the betterment of the team.

In between the practice battles, the nearly four dozen young men on the N.C. roster got their first tastes of Gary Fowler's Football Love 101.

Fowler Football Love is heavy on both tough love (when needed) and unending hugs, pats on the back and a good number of what are usually unexpected (by the recipient) kisses on the cheek from the white-haired coaching veteran.

It all seemed to work just as Fowler wanted it to. But on the Friday night before the game he got his answer in the team's final meeting.

After listening to Drew Fowler, Gary's son, talk of his days playing in the Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas then the East-West Shrine Game at the end of his playing days with the Air Force Academy, Gary Fowler offered members of the team the opportunity to stand and share any thoughts they had with their teammates and coaching staff, which also included West Johnston High head coach Bennett Jones who served as the N.C. team's scout for the week.

One-by-one they stood and talked about what they'd expected the week to be and what it had actually been.

Many thanked their teammates for accepting them; others told their teammates that they felt closer to this team than they felt to the ones they'd spent an entire season on before coming to western South Carolina to join the N.C. squad.

A few spoke of being lovingly accepted by a group they didn't know if they belonged with. Above all, in one way or another they talked about the family and what it meant to be a part of the N.C. Shrine Bowl team family.

The meeting was planned to run less than an hour. It stretched for nearly two but when it was over, coach Fowler knew it was time well spent. It was proof positive that his approach to building young men and a football team had taken hold with this group.

"I had no idea it would last that long," Fowler said later that night. "But it was important to all of those guys to say what they said. A lot of what they said took a lot of courage. "It's something I'll never forget."

Still, in athletics there's the scoreboard that usually matters most. On that account South Carolina alone won this year's Shrine Bowl. Sure, North Carolina would have loved to bring home a win to go along with their memories from the visit to the Shriner's Hospital in Greenville and the week of practice and activities but it wasn't to be.

The easiest - and maybe the most applicable - description of what happened to Gary Fowler and the N.C. team on Saturday is this: Sometimes, even with the ideal preparation, you just don't win. North Carolina's players and coaches did their best to win on Saturday afternoon. They didn't.

But in the realm of scholastic sports when character building and learning to work with others toward a common goal is most important and you prove to be winners on that account on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, who remembers one final score?