It’s no secret that travel times are getting longer for rural schools in a state where metro Atlanta is growing much faster than the rest of Georgia.
Loren Maxwell, a researcher with the Georgia High School Football Historians Association who does computer football rankings, was able to demonstrate the problem mathematically last week when he calculated the average round-trip distances for region games for every school in Georgia beginning in 2014-15.
Thomas County Central, Bainbridge, Camden County and Thomson will travel an average of more than 200 miles round-trip to region football games the next two seasons. The average drives for Brookwood and Harrison in metro Atlanta will be less than 12 miles.
The average round-trip linear distance for region opponents in Georgia is about 60 miles, but for about 30 schools — all located outside of metro Atlanta — it’s about twice that, meaning two-hour drives are the norm. For metro Atlanta, the average round-trip distance is only 25 miles.
For the new cycle starting this fall, the GHSA enacted a new bylaw that allowed it to place certain isolated schools in one class for football and another for other sports. That move will cut the travel times for Bainbridge, Thomas Central and Camden in half. Thomas Central, for example, is located an average of 241.94 miles from its eight football rivals in Region 1-AAAAA, but only 97.78 miles from its average region rivals for other sports in 1-AAAA.
The best situation for travel is in Subregion A of Region 4-AAA, which ironically comprises schools from three counties. McNair, Cedar Grove and Towers are from DeKalb, Maynard Jackson and South Atlanta from Atlanta Public Schools and North Clayton from Clayton. The average distance among them is 13.05 miles. McNair is an average of 9.36 round-trip miles from its subregion opponents, the shortest distance in the state.
GHSA region appeals: North Atlanta and Grady were among seven Georgia high schools that won appeals last week to move into different regions beginning with the 2014-15 academic year. Also granted appeals by the GHSA were Walnut Grove, Adairsville, Southwest Atlanta Christian, Whitefield Academy and a potential new Meriwether County High to open this fall. Losing appeals were Milton, Salem, Pike County and Portal.
North Atlanta will join Region 7-AAAAA, Subregion B and have North Springs and Riverwood as its closest rivals. Grady moves into 6-AAAA, which originally was an all-DeKalb region. Whitefield Academy and Southwest Atlanta Christian, private schools known for their basketball, essentially swapped regions, Whitefield to 6-A and SACA to 5-A.
The GHSA will ratify reclassification for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 academic years on Tuesday in Macon.
Jones out at Dutchtown: Kevin "Bull" Jones has resigned as football coach at Dutchtown in Henry County after one season, saying it was not the right fit. Dutchtown was 4-6 under Jones, who replaced Jason Galt.
“I just thought the time was right for personal reasons,’’ Jones said on Monday. “We had a wonderful bunch of kids over there, awesome parents, awesome booster club. It wasn’t my intent to leave there any time soon. My focus was trying to put Dutchtown on the map in football, but for different reasons, that’s not going to happen.’’
Jones was regarded as one of the top assistants in Georgia while at Lovejoy, where he was a defensive coordinator on teams that had 15 shutouts in three seasons and reached two state championship games.
The Dutchtown job is the first of several new openings reported in the past week. Osborne coach Xarvia Smith announced his resignation last week after three seasons. His record was 6-24 at one of the most down-trodden programs in the state.
Fannin County last week hired Gainesville’s defensive coordinator, Jim Pavao, as its new head coach. And four DeKalb County schools have openings, including Redan, Clarkston, Stone Mountain and Cross Keys.
Stephenson churns them out: Stephenson had the most alumni on college football rosters during the 2013 season among Georgia high schools, according to research by Steve Slay, who has combed college rosters online for the past several years to document all Georgians playing at the next level. Slay counted 3,706 former Georgia high school players on college rosters of all levels from junior colleges to Division I.
Following Stephenson, which had 62 players on college rosters, were M.L. King (43), Grayson (41), North Gwinnett (39), Sandy Creek (39), Peachtree Ridge (36), Norcross (36), Tucker (36), McEachern (36), Lovejoy (32), Buford (31), Carver-Columbus (30) and Camden County (30).
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