AJC Varsity

From 1952 Stilson to today: All 278 GHSA teams to sweep boys-girls state titles

Walton, with eight, has the most boys-girls sports sweeps among public schools.
The Buford girls basketball team (pictured) celebrates its 2019 state championship, matching the Wolves' feat in boys basketball that year. The school also won the boys and girls titles in 2017. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)
The Buford girls basketball team (pictured) celebrates its 2019 state championship, matching the Wolves' feat in boys basketball that year. The school also won the boys and girls titles in 2017. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)
By
1 hour ago

Until it closed 71 years ago, Stilson was a high school of about 100 students in Bulloch County. It was known for basketball, having made 13 runs to state quarterfinals or better leading up to the historic 1952 season.

Coached by S.A. Driggers, also the school superintendent, Stilson’s boys and girls swept the Class C titles that year in the Macon City Auditorium. The boys beat Montezuma in overtime, completing a 30-0 season. The girls, playing an archaic six-player game with three on each side of midcourt, defeated West Crisp of Cordele 40-27 a week earlier.

Stilson High is long gone, but it forever remains the first GHSA team to win boys and girls championships in the same sport during the same academic year.

Nowadays, it’s not so uncommon. There are far more girls sports teams and there are eight classes, twice as many as existed in Stilson’s day.

There have been 277 boy-girl title sweeps since 1952 — seven this academic year, achieved by Atlanta Classical and Westminster in cross country; Bleckley County in both cross country and track and field; and Greater Atlanta Christian, Lassiter and Marist in swimming.

Several more schools can do it this month as the GHSA is staging boys and girls championships in track and field, soccer, lacrosse, golf and tennis. Walton’s soccer teams, Milton’s lacrosse teams and Westminster’s tennis teams are among the contenders.

Westminster is always a good bet. The Atlanta private school has achieved 61 of those 278 all-time sweeps. That’s 21.9%.

Other private schools — such as Marist (30), Lovett (12), Wesleyan (11) and St. Pius (10) — are high on the list. Walton, with eight, has the most sports sweeps among public schools.

The sport with the most sweeps is cross country, with 77. That’s the easiest sport to train boys and girls together, so it makes sense. Tennis comes next with 61 sweeps, then soccer with 28.

Basketball once was among the hardest to achieve a sweep, with only seven through 2005. Those doing it typically were smaller schools, such as Stilson. They included Jeff Davis, Clinch County and little Roopville, the Carroll County hometown of sportscaster Keith Jackson. Roopville swept in 1959 and closed six months later.

Since 2005, there have been 19 schools to sweep the basketball titles. Norcross and Wesleyan, which sit across Spalding Drive from each other, have five sweeps between them.

In Stilson, the accomplishment remains a proud one. The Bulloch County Historical Society erected a marker in 2014 to remind people that Stilson once was a bustling town on the railroad line connecting Savannah to Statesboro. The marker includes news of those 1952 Stilson basketball teams.

Those teams also can be found on the lists below. Two show sweeps by school and by sport. The other shows all 278 sweeps, from Stilson until today.

By school

By sport

All 278 sports programs that have swept boys-girls titles

Listed in alphabetical order by school name.

About the Author

Todd Holcomb covers high school sports across the state. He rejoined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2025 and has worked with the AJC in varying capacities since 1985. He is a co-founder and editor of Georgia High School Football Daily.

More Stories

The Latest

GHSA Soccer finals at Duluth High School

Photos: Islands soccer makes history, wins school's first state championship in any sport

2h ago

Whitefield Academy ‘fired up’ after 1st boys soccer state title in 9 years

AJC VARSITY

Deflected free kick gives Holy Innocents’ girls 1st soccer title since 2021

Keep Reading

Here are the 425 times a GHSA team has won 4 straight state titles

State track results: Bleckley County makes history; Carrollton, Buford win 6A

Full GHSA state track results: Cartersville wins school’s first title

Featured

Brant Frost IV

First Liberty founder pleads guilty in $140M fraud case

Supreme Court candidates sued the state in secret. A judge is keeping it that way.

AJC HER+STORY

She took over her dad’s construction firm and made it a key player in Atlanta