Cedar Grove won the 2019 Class 3A football state championship after a 21-14 victory against Crisp County at Georgia State Stadium in a game that seems like was played a millennia ago.
The victory marked the second state championship in as many years for the Saints, this one under a new head coach, Miguel Patrick.
Now, almost eight months later, the Saints will still wait more than another month to take the field after DeKalb schools delayed the season until October. Cedar Grove will open Oct. 9 against Carver-Atlanta in a Region 5-3A matchup.
The unique season on the horizon features the expected – returning talent, storylines regarding reclassification, new matchups, historic rivalries – that are normally the focus. But the addition of the vast unknown has thrust itself to center stage.
My response in the final AJC “At Issue” package in May (What will football look like in the fall?) has proven prophetic. I wrote that sports, as we know them, are over, and I was correct. We have seen that truth from the upper echelons of the sporting world to the high school level. This is like nothing we have ever known.
Sure, the games will begin. But what happens when three or four of the top teams/players/regions in the state are quarantined at playoff time? What happens when, the day after the semifinals, one program is required to quarantine? Is the other team a de facto champion? Does the final game get delayed until the other program is safe?
From the logistics of dancing around the COVID-19 pandemic and its quarantine protocols to the understanding that, even if a season does get completed and champions crowned, there will be inevitable struggles that could very well put an asterisk in the 2020 record books.
Should it?
Cedar Grove’s Patrick answered several lingering questions regarding his program, the pandemic, asterisks and the upcoming season in a wide-ranging Q&A on Friday:
Q. Do you think this season will get finished, and if it does, will it look anything like a real championship season?
Patrick: To be honest with you, I don’t know. I mean there’s so many unknowns around what we’re trying to do and so many differences in the different communities that are trying to come together to make this happen. I just don’t know if we can. We’re seeing Colquitt go down and that’s tough, because that could happen to any of us in any part of the season. What if that happens a week before the playoffs? How do you rectify that? So I just don’t know. I really don’t know. I would love to play an entire season. I would love it for our seniors. I would love it for the rest of our team, for our community. I can be honest with you ... I just don’t know how we’re going to get it.
Q. What could the playoffs look like if we get there? Should there be an asterisk on 2020?
Patrick: I think you might have to. Let’s say you have the No. 1-ranked and No. 2-ranked teams meet in the state championship. Well, did those two teams have to survive the No. 3- or No. 4-ranked teams? Or were those teams quarantined? Who is to say that the No. 1 team is the best if they didn’t have to go through the best bracket? Did they make it through a bracket that included all the teams that qualified for the playoffs, all the ranked teams? You just don’t know.
Q. What gives you hope?
Patrick: Well, like Alabama did it last week. And they did it with fans and understand this: You are talking about some of their top-tier programs that have 100-plus kids on the team. If they can do it, we surely can do it. Right? And I’m not trying to knock the state of Alabama by any means. All I’m saying is, if they can get through it, I’m sure we could find a way. There are too many great coaches, too many people who are in the GHSA that we could find a way to get it done. So that that’s the most promising thing to me that our neighboring state of Alabama has started their season. And you know, they’re going to continue that. So I just hope that we can kind of follow suit. And if we see (COVID-19) getting out of hand, then we need to all come together and shut it down. We gave it our best shot.
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