Phil Anastasia: The auto mechanic and the engineer

Herbert Lambert didn't teach his son to read defenses, shed blockers, or explode through tackles.

He taught him to change spark plugs, replace timing belts, and rotate tires.

He also taught him to make the most of every moment in every period during a school day.

"My father believes that every minute you are in class you can learn something," Quanzell Lambert said.

Quanzell Lambert surprised some folks on Thursday by announcing that he plans to attend Rutgers University on a football scholarship.

The 6-foot-2, 240-pound linebacker from Timber Creek also was recruited by the likes of Iowa and Nebraska as well as Oklahoma, Alabama, and Northwestern. With his grades and athletic ability, he could have gone anywhere.

But whether Lambert becomes a dominating inside linebacker at Rutgers and helps the Scarlet Knights to a couple of Big East titles on his way to a career in the NFL isn't really the moral of the story.

Because this really isn't a football story. It's a story about a father and a son who have pretty much been on their own for the last seven or eight years.

Timber Creek coach Rob Hinson said Herbert Lambert "works 80 hours a week" to support his son, and sold a race car that he rebuilt, practically from scratch, to move himself and his boy out of a difficult section of Camden and into the Black Horse Pike school district.

"I can't tell you how much Quanzell looks up to his father," Hinson said.

Hinson calls Herbert Lambert "the stabilizer" in Quanzell Lambert's life.

"Quanzell had a really, really rough childhood," Hinson said. "His dad, he's everything to him."

Herbert Lambert is a crane operator for the South Jersey Port Corp. in Camden. He also is an expert in automotive and diesel engines - part side job, part hobby.

He has been a single parent since Quanzell was around 10 years old, balancing work and attendance at his boy's athletic events, stressing school far more than success in sports.

"There wasn't too much that I would accept," Herbert Lambert said. "My thing was always keep trying. Just keep trying. If you work hard, something good will come out of it. What you put in, you will get out."

Quanzell Lambert said his father has been his inspiration.

"He's the reason I'm here today," Quanzell Lambert said. "He's my motivation. He's the engine that drives me."

Quanzell Lambert has a 3.4 grade-point average. He plans to study engineering at Rutgers. He has inherited his father's love of hands-on work, as well as his sensitivity to others.

"I'd like to build different things, maybe build something to help disabled people - help the world," Quanzell Lambert said of his post-football plans.

He grew up watching his dad work on engines, handing him wrenches and screwdrivers, dirtying his hands under the hood. He hopes to become a mechanical engineer.

"He's going to take it way farther than I have," Herbert Lambert said.

Quanzell Lambert is driving a Cadillac CTS that his father helped him purchase. It's an older car. It needs a little work now and then.

"He tells me what to do," Quanzell Lambert said. "But he makes me do it myself."