Friday winners: Gainesville in showdown; Oglethorpe in upset; Creekside 91-0
Gainesville beat defending Class 5A champion Milton, Oglethorpe County took down its first top-10 opponent in 31 years, and No. 1-ranked North Oconee and Carver of Columbus – both on 22-game winning streaks – won football games by a single point Friday night.
And in the most petrifying score, Creekside defeated Drew 91-0. It was the most lopsided GHSA game in 78 years and the third-most in GHSA history, as only games in 1967 (Hamilton 95, Blakeney 0) and 1964 (Bradwell Institute 94, Claxton 0) can top it, according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.
Elsewhere around the state, Lowndes, Marietta and Fitzgerald won critical games in region play on the ninth weekend of the regular season.
Gainesville, the No. 4 Class 5A team, won the week’s highest-ranked game, defeating No. 3 Milton, a 2024 and 2025 state champion, 28-16. Nigel Newkirk, a junior top-500 national prospect, rushed for 165 yards and three touchdowns. His 50-yard run with 5:57 left broke open a close game.
The victory left Gainesville (7-1, 4-0) with No. 6 Roswell (6-1, 3-0) as the only Region 6-5A teams without a region loss.
Oglethorpe County, a long-time struggler that was 0-10 last season, beat No. 5 Rabun County 28-19 in a Class A Division I game in the night’s biggest surprise. Rabun County entered undefeated and favored by 23 points by the computer Maxwell Ratings.
Oglethorpe County (3-4) had lost 43 straight games to top-10 opponents and 69 of 70 since 1976. The team’s most recent top-10 victory came against Buford in 1994.
North Oconee and Carver of Columbus, both defending champions, found themselves on the ropes in region games.
North Oconee, of Class 4A, beat Eastside of Covington 14-13, as Eastside missed an extra point in the fourth quarter. The victory was North Oconee’s 23rd straight overall and 34th straight in region play.
Carver, of Class 2A, beat No. 7 Sumter County 8-7. Carver led 2-0 entering the fourth quarter and trailed 7-2 before scoring a late touchdown. Carver matched North Oconee with the state’s longest current winning streak. Carver’s region-winning streak is 20 games.
There were two other games with matching top-10 opponents.
No. 2 Clinch County beat No. 5 Brooks County 6-0 in a Class A Division II game. It’s the first time that Brooks County, a 2024 state runner-up, has been shut out by a team from the same classification since 2011 against Fitzgerald.
In Class 3A, No. 5 North Hall stayed unbeaten and beat Greater Atlanta Christian 49-38. GAC is ranked No. 10 in the Class 3A-A Private division but plays in the same Region 6 as North Hall, now the leader with a 7-0 overall and 4-0 region record.
In a similar 3A game between public and private schools, unranked Harlem beat the No. 4 small private team, Aquinas, 21-14 in an Augusta-area game.
One other unranked team beat a top-10 opponent: Fitzgerald, a 24-21 winner against No. 3 Thomasville in Class A Division I. Thomasville had lost to No. 1 Worth County 41-40 in overtime last week.
The outcome marks the first back-to-back region losses for Thomasville since 2018. Fitzgerald, a 2024 semifinal team, was ranked in preseason but dropped out after a three-game September losing streak.
Several other games went as expected but were notable.
No. 6 Marist of Class 4A won the Fish Bowl with a 28-21 victory over arch rival St. Pius, which led most of the game.
Lowndes emerged as the lone team without a loss in South Georgia’s Region 1-6A with a 35-14 victory over Camden County because Lowndes’ crosstown rival, No. 9 Valdosta, beat the other unbeaten region team, Richmond Hill, 41-0.
Also in Class 6A, Marietta beat North Cobb 36-35. Marietta started 0-4 under new coach Cameron Duke, but has won four straight, all in region play, and now stands alone in first place in Region 5. North Cobb is the defending champion.
About the Author
Todd Holcomb has been a contributor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1985. He is currently co-founder and editor of Georgia High School Football Daily.
