It wasn’t a great night for the kicking games, but it had a perfect ending for Mitchell Bainbridge and Holy Innocents’.
Bainbridge, a senior, kicked a 27-yard field goal with 15 seconds remaining to give Holy Innocents’ a 13-12 victory over KIPP Atlanta Collegiate and clinched the Region 5-3A championship Friday night at Riverwood High School in Sandy Springs.
The region title is the first for Holy Innocents’ (9-0, 6-0) since it won three in a four-season stretch from 2019 to 2022. The Golden Bears are 9-0 for the first time since the 2019 team won its first 12 games before losing to eventual champion Eagle’s Landing Christian in the Class A Private semifinals.
KIPP Atlanta (6-2, 4-1) fell out of a tie for first place after suffering its first region loss. The Warriors can clinch second place with a victory against Wesleyan next week. They remain in prime position for a high playoff seed, as they came into the game as the No. 2 team among Class 3A public schools in the GHSA’s PSR rankings that will determine seeds for the playoffs.
“Hats off to KIPP and coach (Corey) Jarvis for what he’s done over there in just two years,” Holy Innocents’ coach Nick Perrotta said. “They have an unbelievable football team. They’re really good on defense, really good on offense, they’ve got a lot of explosive players and a lot of really talented coaches. It was a back-and-forth game all night. We knew it was going to be a four-quarter game. We told our kids all week it was going to come down to a kick, and we made the one that we needed to.”
The low-scoring game was not unexpected between two teams that had been shutting down their opponents all season. KIPP Atlanta was allowing 11.9 points per game, third-best in Class 3A. Holy Innocents’ was giving up just 7 points per game, the best of any team in Class 4A-2A Private.
What was more surprising was that neither team could stop the other from moving down the field on long, time-consuming drives, which limited the number of possessions for each team. Although both teams finished with about 300 total yards, neither was able to make the most of the scoring opportunities.
“It was a weird game in the sense that we were both able to get a lot of yards,” Perrotta said. “But ultimately the game comes down to third down, fourth down and red zone, and we capitalized enough in the red zone and they didn’t.”
Bainbridge opened the scoring on Holy Innocents’ first possession of the game with a 45-yard field goal with 2:25 remaining in the first quarter. He missed his next four, all of which were from 40 yards or more (including two 52-yarders) and two of which were blocked.
“Mitchell Bainbridge has been lights out all season,” Perrotta said. “He has been absolutely one of the biggest reasons for our success this year.”
KIPP Atlanta had its own scoring difficulties. Clifton Kirkland’s 25-yard field-goal attempt on the Warriors’ first drive of the game was blocked, and the Warriors missed the extra-point attempts on both of their touchdowns. KIPP Atlanta also turned the ball over on downs at the Holy Innocents’ 6-yard line with about two minutes remaining in the first half.
Both of KIPP Atlanta’s touchdowns came on fourth-down plays. The first was a 20-yard pass from Lawrence Moreland to Malachi Heard on fourth-and-12 that gave KIPP Atlanta a 6-3 lead early in the second quarter. The other was a 53-yard pass from Moreland to Travion Callaway on fourth-and-9 that put the Warriors in front 12-10 with 8:07 left in the game.
Holy Innocents’ quarterback Ryan Woods had a major impact in the second half after running back Sam Chasteen, the teams’ leading rusher, left the game with an injury late in the second quarter. Chasteen, who was averaging 101.4 yards rushing through the first eight games, finished with 43 yards on 10 carries in the Golden Bears’ first two possessions.
Woods had 8 yards rushing on seven carries in the first half but added 51 yards on 12 carries in the second and scored Holy Innocents’ only touchdown on a 1-yard run for 10-6 lead late in the third quarter.
“With Sam, our best rusher, going down, I really wanted to take the ball,” Woods said. “I wanted to take over the game a little bit and help our team move the ball.”
Woods also had 97 of his 162 passing yards in the final two quarters.
“Ryan is the heart and soul of our football team,” Perrotta said. “He’s in his third year as the quarterback. We went through bumps and bruises his freshman year. When I took over in 2024, we transitioned away from being an under-center, triple-option team with a freshman quarterback and six or seven other freshmen starting. A lot of those guys were playing here tonight, and they went through that adversity in 2024 so that tonight could happen.”