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GWA to play for title
Published November 22, 2009
MACON - Cancel your Thanksgiving weekend plans, George Walton Academy fans. Your Bulldogs are going to the Georgia Independent School Association Class AAA championship football game.
In a heart-stopping, topsy-turvy game that had as many twists and turns as a mountain highway, GWA held on for a 26-24 upset of second-ranked Tattnall Square Academy Friday night in the state semifinals.
The Bulldogs (10-3) will travel to Albany on Friday to face No. 1 Deerfield-Windsor, a team they beat in the season opener way back in August.
Aside from trying to knock off the state’s top-ranked team for the second time in a single season, GWA’s biggest challenge might be trying to recover from back-to-back gut-wrenching postseason games.
A week after blocking an extra point attempt to preserve a 21-20 win over Stratford Academy, the Bulldogs again needed some late-game heroics to survive against a team they hadn’t come close to beating in six years.
“That was one of the most exciting games I’ve ever been a part of,” said GWA defensive coordinator Billy Ray Bowers, who was on the same field in 2003 when the Bulldogs last beat Tattnall to earn the school’s third state title.
“Just the ebb and flow was really something to see.”
In a game that featured five lead changes and not one, but two, fantastic finishes, it was Bower’s defense that overcame a breakdown just before halftime to save the game in the end.
Leading 12-8 with less than a minute left in the first half, the Bulldogs fumbled twice and Tattnall turned both into touchdowns to go ahead 22-12.
GWA’s Justin Brown, who committed a fumble that led to the first touchdown and then was beaten on a pass that led to the second touchdown, made up for his miscues by returning a kickoff 82 yards for a score with 2 seconds left in the second quarter to trim Tattnall’s halftime margin to 22-19.
But just when you thought the game couldn’t get any weirder, it did.
The Bulldogs took advantage of a Tattnall fumble on its first series of the second half to regain the lead 26-22.
Michael Peek recovered to give GWA the ball at the Trojans’ 36-yard line, and three plays later he was on the receiving end of a 45-yard TD pass from quarterback Ty Shelnutt.
The two teams then exchanged punts until Tattnall took over with 5:33 left in the game and drove 62 yards to the Bulldogs’ 5-yard line, where Tattnall faced a fourth down with 1:02 on the clock.
When Trojans quarterback Ryan Bartholomew’s pass was batted away in the end zone, the Bulldogs took over, needing only to take a knee and run out the clock.
But the so-called “victory formation” turned disastrous when GWA’s Shelnutt bobbled a snap and was tackled in the end zone for a safety, cutting the Bulldogs’ lead to two points and giving Tattnall another chance at victory.
The Trojans returned the ensuing kickoff to midfield and picked up a first down. But when Nathan Neufeld intercepted Tattnall’s last-second desperation hail-Mary pass, the GWA stands erupted and the players stormed the field to celebrate not only a huge win but a shot at the school’s fourth GISA crown.
“I couldn’t have picked a better place to get a win like this,” said an emotional GWA head coach Don Williams as he gazed around a venue where his teams have suffered both some devastating losses and historic wins. “These kids have gotten better and better every week until now they’re a really good team. They really hung in there tonight and kept fighting.”
GWA took an early 6-0 lead on a pair of field goals by Cord Gunnin.
But after going three-and-out on its first two possession, Tattnall got its offense rolling and went ahead 8-6 on a 20-yard TD pass from Bartholomew to running back Andrew Layson and a two-point conversion run by Bartholomew.
The Bulldogs regained the lead 12-8 three plays later when Brown took a pitch and raced around the left end 75 yards untouched.
The lead changed sides for the fourth time of the first half on Bartholomew’s two touchdown passes inside the final minute of the second quarter, both to senior receiver Ham Goodner.
But the Bulldogs regrouped and shut out the Trojans’ offense in the second half.
Once again, GWA’s big-play trio of Peek, Brown and Eric Dobbs led the offense. Peek caught his seventh TD pass of the year, Dobbs rushed 20 times for 101 yards and Brown had 156 all-purpose yards and two scores.
But Tattnall head coach Barney Hester credited GWA’s offensive line for the victory.
“They had some speed that we had a hard time containing,” Hester said. “But it was those guys up front that made the difference. They are big and strong and really tough to handle.”
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