The high school football season is over, and I had the pleasure of watching all five championship games last weekend. It was a marathon, yes, but it seemed a fitting end to one of the more intriguing seasons of recent years. To include the obligatory game results: Wesleyan defeated ECI 33-21 in Class A; Buford defeated Calhoun 45-21 in Class 2A; Cairo defeated Flowery Branch 28-14 in Class 3A; Tucker defeated Marist 15-3 in Class 4A; and Camden County defeated Peachtree Ridge 21-14 in Class 5A. Now that’s out of the way, here are some random observations and thoughts from championship weekend.
1. Had Flowery Branch and Peachtree Ridge won in the final two games of the weekend, we would have had five state champions from the same general region of the state: the Northeast Atlanta metro area. Tucker (just south of Gwinnett County), Flowery Branch (just north of Gwinnett County), and Wesleyan, Buford and Peachtree Ridge (all from northern Gwinnett County) as champs would have sent quite a message about the quality of the Atlanta-area brand. The debate will continue to rage on about the relative merits of North Georgia, South Georgia, big-city and small-town football, but this year, hand it to the metro area.
2. I thought the Falcons-Bucs game had started early when Peachtree Ridge and Camden County trotted out onto the Dome turf. I mean, Camden is packing some serious beef along the lines, and the Wildcats are running at least two deep on offense and defense with kids that are much bigger than your average high school lineman. What are they feeding ‘em down in Kingsland, anyways? And it’s not just the size of their individual players that is impressive; they dressed so many players that, walking arm-in-arm in a line parallel to the end zones, the entire roster of players stretched to more than the width of the playing field. I guess they just do everything bigger in Camden County.
3. We learned once again that it’s a lot easier to laugh at your failings if you come out on top. After the Class 5A game, Camden County head coach Jeff Herron, when addressing his decision to throw to the end zone with under two minutes left while driving for the game-icing touchdown (the pass was intercepted, giving Peachtree Ridge one last shot to tie), had this to say: “We should fire the guy that called that play. I can’t tell the defense ‘please bail me out’ because that was the stupidest play call in my life, probably.”
4. I believe that Buford would defeat three out of the other four state champions. It may seem like I’m going pretty far out on a limb with that statement, but I don’t believe anyone except Camden and Peachtree would match the Wolves’ bulk at the line of scrimmage. Let’s say (and this is a very rough estimate) that this year’s Buford team would beat two thirds of the teams in Class 5A, just about every team (if not every team) in 4A, and every team in 3A, 2A and A. For a thought experiment, place Buford in any region in the highest classification; as I see it, the Wolves are a playoff team in all eight leagues this year. And last year’s Buford team was appreciably better than the 2008 version.
5. Sometimes being the heaviest favorite in the field of 10 teams isn’t the best thing for that squad. Emanuel County Institute looked unprepared for the quickness and the offensive proficiency, both through the air and on the ground, of Wesleyan. It remains to be seen whether he’s a Division I talent like ECI’s Washaun Ealey, Dexter Moody and J.C. Lanier, but in Saturday’s Class A final, Wolves running back Kyle Karempelis (and that’s Ka-REM-pelis, as the Dome’s PA announcer had to be informed after several mispronunciations) was the best player on the field. Karempelis, just a sophomore, scored three touchdowns to key the Wolves’ shocking victory. Wesleyan continually surprised teams after two early—and now seemingly inexplicable—losses, and ECI was just the last victim.
6. There’s something about that Tucker fan base. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s obvious the Tigers’ supporters and the community surrounding the school take just about as much pride in their student athletes as any group of fans in the state. Saturday’s win was an emotional one for the program, which had never won a state title despite being good for a really, really long time. And that this redemption came a year after the Tigers’ second-half collapse in the semifinals on the same turf surely made it sweeter. After the 2007 boys basketball title, and now the Class 4A football title, the Tucker faithful certainly have a lot to be proud of.
7. The decision to play all five championship games in the Georgia Dome may have been long overdue, but the GHSA got it right. This was a slam dunk, and now when players and coaches start talking in August about “making it to the Dome,” we know they’re talking about playing for the ultimate prize, not just the semis.
Ewalt can be reached at aewalt@scoreatl.com.
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