Thomas County Central, Brunswick and Roswell won region championships and the final unclaimed Class 6A playoff berths were secured Friday in the final weekend of the high school football regular season.
Thomas County Central won the Region 1 title with a 24-14 victory over Northside-Warner Robins. The Yellow Jackets trailed 14-10 at halftime but scored two touchdowns in the second half, including a 50-yard run by Ricky Fulton with 4:22 remaining that put the game away. Thomas County Central, in its first season under head coach Justin Rogers, won its first region title since 2016 and completed its first 10-0 regular season since 2007. The Yellow Jackets went 5-6 in 4A last season before moving up two classes during the reclassification process.
Northside finished in a tie for second place with Lee County and Houston County but earned the No. 2 seed through the region tiebreakers. Lee County will enter the playoffs as the No. 3 seed, and Houston County takes the No. 4 spot.
No. 8 Brunswick completed its second consecutive 10-0 regular season and won its second straight region title with a 30-27 victory over Effingham County in a Region 2 showdown. Jayden Drayton gave the Pirates a 30-20 lead with a 4-yard run with 1:54 left. Effingham County scored with 19 seconds remaining and recovered an onside kick, but the game ended on a sack.
“That’s what a championship game looks like; when you come in here, and you fight tooth-and-nail, and you claw, and you just dig down deep and empty the tank out,” first-year Brunswick coach Garrett Grady told Derrick Davis of the Brunswick News. “That’s what our guys did tonight.”
Effingham County, trying to win its first region title since 1995, finished as the No. 2 seed, followed by Glynn Academy and Evans.
Third-ranked Roswell, which moved down from Class 7A this season, won the Region 7 championships with a 38-21 victory over north Fulton rival Alpharetta. Nykahi Davenport rushed for 171 yards and three touchdowns, K.J. Smith passed for 230 yards and two touchdowns, and Christopher Elko had 105 yards and two touchdowns receiving. The Hornets won four region titles in five seasons between 2015 and 2019 but hadn’t won one since. However, they were quarterfinalists in the highest class last season.
Alpharetta, seeking its first region title since 2017, finished in second place, followed by Blessed Trinity and Sprayberry.
Woodward Academy of Region 3, Marist of Region 4, Hughes of Region 5, Rome of Region 6 and Gainesville of Region 8 clinched region championships the previous weekend. Thomas County Central, Brunswick, Hughes and Gainesville all finished the regular season 10-0; no other classification had more undefeated teams.
Several teams that clinched playoff berths were notable.
Evans ended a four-game losing streak with a 37-24 victory over South Effingham in the game that decided the No. 4 spot in Region 2. The Knights are in the postseason for a school-record seventh consecutive season.
Allatoona took second place in Region 6 with a 31-0 victory over River Ridge. A loss would have kept the Buccaneers out of the playoffs for the first time since they began playing a region schedule in 2010. Allatoona started the season 1-5 overall and 0-2 in the region but won four straight games to advance to the postseason.
Riverwood lost to Marist 34-7 but got the No. 4 seed in Region 4 despite a 2-8 overall record when North Atlanta defeated Dunwoody 49-6. North Atlanta is the No. 3 seed behind Marist and St. Pius.
Here are the matchups for the first round (all games are Friday):
(R5 #3) Douglas County at (R6 #2) Allatoona
(R8 #4) Lanier at (R7 #1) Roswell
(R3 #3) Mundy’s Mill at (R4 #2) St. Pius
(R2 #4) Evans at (R1 #1) Thomas County Central
(R6 #3) Sequoyah at (R5 #2) South Paulding
(R7 #4) Sprayberry at (R8 #1) Gainesville
(R4 #3) North Atlanta at (R3 #2) Lovejoy
(R1 #4) Houston County at (R2 #1) Brunswick
(R1 #3) Lee County at (R2 #2) Effingham County
(R4 #4) Riverwood at (R3 #1) Woodward Academy
(R7 #3) Blessed Trinity at (R8 #2) North Forsyth
(R6 #4) River Ridge at (R5 #1) Hughes
(R2 #3) Glynn Academy at (R1 #2) Northside, Warner Robins
(R3 #4) Morrow at (R4 #1) Marist
(R8 #3) Shiloh at (R7 #2) Alpharetta
(R5 #4) Paulding County at (R6 #1) Rome
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