By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

For 60 years, Stockbridge has watched a few dozen teams celebrate state titles, many who lined up on the other side during a season.

Maxwell Ratings Prediction: Stockbridge 28, Perry 20

The Sports Report prediction: The teams are even in many ways, and both know how to win close games down the stretch.
          Perry’s defense may be overlooked a little bit this season, and the speed will counter some of Stockbridge’s balance. Both teams have quality passing and running games, and there will be some popping pads from the running backs.
          Early nerves will be a key, and who can avoid an early hole. Expect big plays and then stalled drives. Will it come down to placekickers?
          Perry 27, Stockbridge 24

Perry has been in that situation for 10 more years.

The Panthers have the record for drought length, and the Tigers weren’t far behind.

One of those communities will figuratively loses its mind around 6:30 p.m. or so Tuesday when either Kevin Smith or Thomas Clark will stand next to GHSA executive director Robin Hines and accept a state championship trophy.

And a very old monkey will have hopped off a program’s back.

The state championship newbies go at it at 4 p.m. on Tuesday in Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Class 4A championship, with the chance to put to rest a reputation of falling short.

That, actually, has already happened just by reaching this point.

Stockbridge is carrying the banner for all of Henry County, which has a state football championship slump. Perry hopes to become the third Houston County public school program to bring the trophy back down I-75, joining Warner Robins and Northside.

Defensive back Trejean Day and running back Ahmad Gordon come from Perry families, folks who have lived through a fairly barren postseason horizon over the years who have thrived under the leadership of head coach Kevin Smith and his staff.

The progress and winning commenced not long after the arrival of Smith and Co. And a program that needed binoculars to see potential is in The Big Game.

“It’s crazy,” Day said. “Every game, me and my family had to get together. The majority of my family, they went to the same high school, Perry, right here. It means a lot to them. It means a lot to the community.”

Gordon wasn’t necessarily expected this season to have the impact his older brother Armar Jr., had as the Panthers’ starting quarterback for two seasons before graduating.

But he worked after last season and quickly became Perry’s go-to running back, and then the Panthers’ record-setting quarterback, racking up a number of program single-season marks, including rushing yards and touchdowns, in his first year as a starter.

“I really started training after last season,” he said. “My focus wasn’t on basketball anymore. I started training like three times a day trying to be the best running back I can be.”

Perry faces a team that knocked off two-time defending champ and top-ranked Benedictine 45-31 last week on the road, opening the door for some new blood.

But Clark points to the Tigers’ second-round 28-24 home win over Westminster of Atlanta. It was a highlight – and dream - finish.

“They were up with and had the football with 1:50 to go in the game,” said the third-year head coach. “I had to use all three timeouts in their final drive. It came down to fourth and 2 on their 40-yardline.”

The Cadets went for it and the Tigers bowed up and sent them backward, getting the ball back with no timeouts and a little more than a minute left..

“We had a big pass play that got us down around the 4 yd line,” the former longtime Stockbridge assistant said. “We handed the ball off to Jayden Scott for the go ahead score with about 30 seconds the play in the game.

“Our defense got the stop to seal the victory,” he said. “This game was instrumental in shaping our players attitude and was a big wake-up call.”

And it set the table with the confidence to go hand Benedictine its first home loss since the 2021 opener.

Perry have had more physical talent the past two years, but the program’s yearly improvement in teamwork and chemistry indicated to Smith that this group was capable of something quite special.

“Our kids work,” Smith said. “This summer, ‘Coach, we ain’t gonna go a little bit more?’ ‘No, we want you to keep wanting to come back.’ We don’t want to drive it in there, and then, ‘Man, we got to go out there today?’ That builds that ‘get to.’ We get to go practice. ‘Man, we got to go out there today?’ You don’t want that attitude.”

Another sign of how different things are at Perry.

A key has been the immediate adapting to a new environment for quarterback Colter Ginn, who transferred from Peach County and has delivered a 2,000-yard passing season despite missing a few games in the middle of the season with a thumb injury.

More on the differences at Perry? The Panthers didn’t pout and crumble,, they simple hopped on the shoulders of backup quarterback Cullen McDaniel, who went 2-1 as a starter and has completed 70.3 percent of his passes for 634 yards in eight games.

The defense may be the underrated part of this team, a unit that has given up some points but stood tall when it counted, like in a 7-3 win over then-No. 2 Bainbridge in the second round of the playoffs, as well in the next two postseason games.

“A lot of the teams that we play, we got social media,” Day said. “They disrespect us a lot. But we use it as fuel.

“I love the way we swarm to the ball. It’s just high energy. We got a lot of team speed. We ain’t the biggest, but we got speed.”

Day is third with 6.4 tackles a game, behind Jerrell Pinkney’s 8.2 and Jordan Donald’s 8.0 stops a game. Chayden Barber has six tackles and Trevor Hansen five. And four Panthers each have two interceptions.

Clark doesn’t disagree.

“They have a very athletic group of players that you can tell have been committed to the weight room,” he said. “They do a great job playing great gap sound defense and they fly to the football really well. Their defensive line gets off the football really fast and does a good job reading and defeating blocks.

“Their linebackers do a great job with reads and getting to the football and tackling well. In the secondary, they cover ground very fast and play very soundly.”

Teams get to this point perhaps doing some different things, but doing them with the same high level of execution. Now, nerves come into play, especially for two teams who have never been on this stage.

Maybe.

“We're more excited,” Day said. “We’ve never been nervous. We know we go out there, we do our thing. Anything goes left, play the next play. The results, the score is going to handle itself at the end of the game.”