By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

A year ago, J.T. Wall was a few weeks into being a full-time athletics director and offseason head football coach.

That was the first time his administrative duties took precedent so early in a long time, like in more than a decade.

John Milledge’s has ended after 11 games only twice since Wall took over at his alma mater, in 2011 and 2024.

It was an adjustment for the head coach, his team, and followers.

“That taste is still there,” said Wall, who promptly escaped by deer hunting. “I killed a lot of stuff.”

The nine losses last year accounted for 37.5 percent of all the losses under Wall.

The earth around John Milledge is back to its normal orbit, and John Milledge is back in a championship game.

The Trojans take on Deerfield-Windsor at Mercer’s Five Star Stadium on Friday night with sights set on the program’s sixth GIAA state title.

All since 2016, and all under Wall. He focuses more on the road to the next one rather than discussions of the previous ones, and on the emotional part, the finality.

Deerfield-Windsor Knights
12-0
Southland 35-13
Mount de Sales           41-10
Westfield                    33-7
Southwest Georgia     28-8
Terrell                          34-0
Baconton Charter        29-0
Brookwood                   40-7
Tiftarea                         21-13
Valwood                       21-20
Maclay (FL)                  41-14
State playoffs
Pinewood Christian    21-3
Westfield                     26-14

John Milledge Trojans
11-1
Bethlehem Christian 49-6
Tiftarea                          42-7
Athens                           14-28
Bulloch                          27-18
Brentwood                    31-28
Stratford                        51-13
FPD                                34-17
Tattnall Square           52-7
Mount de Sales           42-0
State playoffs
Piedmont                     56-0
Frederica                     35-7

“You do actually get to feel the last of everything,” Wall said. “The last Wednesday, the last Tuesday. You know, so you always preach that to these kids. You know, this could be the last (everything).

“It usually starts to sink in like that Wednesday or Thursday when you're out there on the field. I was talking to one of my coaches about it and I said it's just always a weird feeling because you just understand you're never going to have this group the way they are ever again. Ever.”

The last weeks for John Milledge have been pretty good ones as often as not the last dozen years, and the 2025 version of the Trojans has familiar numbers to those other finalists.

John Milledge is getting 39.4 points a game. The last four five state championship teams - 2019-2022 - averaged between 41.3 and 47.4 points.

Opponents are getting all of 11.9 points, stellar under any circumstances. But for John Milledge, in the recent four-title run, that’s all but mediocre. The Trojans held opponents in those four years to a total of 22.7 points a game, at 5.4, 2.5, 6.4, and 8.4 a game.

This year’s competition, though, has been a little stronger than usual and certainly during most of the four-championship run.

Bulloch won last year’s 4A title over the 2023 4A champ FPD, and John Milledge played both (winning 27-18 and 34-17). Class AA champ and longtime rival Brentwood’s only loss is to John Milledge, by only 31-28.

The two-game stretch against Brentwood and 4A finalist Stratford steered the Trojans to Friday night. They got a close game against Brentwood, and had to come back in the final minutes to win. A week later, the boatraced an undefeated Stratford team off a huge win over Brentwood, rolling 51-13.

“We knew it was going to be a hard game,” Wall said. “Really good team, and you kind of blink two or three times, and, holy crap, we’re up 28. Everything is going right, is going our way.

“And we’re like, ‘Don’t change that.’”

Their closest game since then was a 17-point win over FPD.

The Stratford win was the opposite of JMA’s 28-14 loss to Athens Academy.

“That’s the worst game we played all year,” Wall said. “I remember telling them at halftime, ‘Y’all played the worst we could play, and we’re in the game, we should win the game.’

“After the game, I felt like, man, we played God-awful.”

There was a weather delay before the game, interrupting the routine, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was on hand, and the Trojans didn’t recover to answer a moment Wall felt got a little big for a young team.

And that was the end of that for the rest of the season.

“It really happened at a good time for us, being such a young team,” Wall said. “It kind of opened our eyes.”

The Trojans have been in seven championship games since Wall took over in 2011. Deerfield-Windsor joins Frederica and Valwood as teams John Milledge has taken on twice in the ultimate season finale.

John Milledge has also battled Gatewood and Pinewood Christian in title games.

Frederica in 2018 and Valwood in 2023 got the better of John Milledge, 49-0 and 42-21.

The Knights and Trojans went at it in 2022, John Milledge rolling to a 49-0 win, and passing the 600-point mark in 13 games. Only against Stratford (21-7) and Tattnall (28-21) were the Trojans held to less than 42 points.

This is the seventh meeting with Deerfield-Windsor, John Milledge leading 4-1-1 in a series that started in 1981. When Wall was 2.

Friday’s matchup on paper indicates something that doesn’t happen much with John Milledge in championship games: a 48-minute affair.

“They just present a challenge that we really hadn't seen this year,” Wall said. “They throw the football 80, 85 percent of the time. We've been really, really good at stopping the run, so we're going to be challenged on doing something that we hadn't really had to do a whole lot of this year.”

The ratio isn’t quite that extreme, more like 58-42 pass-to-run on plays, but the Knights get 68.8 percent of their yards through the air.

Quarterback Lane Sceals is one of the GIAA’s top threats. He’s completed 65.5 percent of his passes for 2,947 yards, and a staggering 34-3 touchdown-to-interception ratio.

“He had to play his freshman year against us in the state championship game because the starting quarterback got hurt,” Wall said. “He definitely remembers that.

“He’s really good as far as pre-snap reads. People try to fool him. It’s hard to fool him.”

A big offensive line offers quality protection.

Gabe Daniel is his favorite target, with 84 catches for 1,200 yards and 13 touchdowns, but David Hutchins and Brantley Michlig can’t be ignored, teaming for 13 touchdowns and nearly 1,400 yards.

Grier Morey is a playmaker on defense, leading Deerfield-Windsor with 6.7 tackles a game and an attention-getting seven interceptions. But Turner Simmons has 12 tackles for loss and Mangham Pippin 11, and five Knights get at least five tackles a game.

“These guys, I mean, they’re everywhere,” the former fullback said. “They play a ton of guys. Their inside backers are good. They’re going to give you all kinds of looks, and different problems.”

John Milledge knows about giving those same kinds of problems.

A huge unexpected boost was the mid-summer addition of Lewis Cheney at quarterback. He started last season at Northeast, left the team and school, and finally joined his younger brother in Milledgeville.

All he’s done is hit on 62.4 percent of his passes for 1,912 yards, 23 touchdowns and four interceptions.

“He needed a fresh start,” Wall said. “He was good for us, we were good for him. He’s a great kid, just learning every day, not just football.”

Suddenly, the Trojans got a quarterback who was expected to be an impact player on a GHSA Class A playoff team, rather than go through the battle of a sophomore and a freshman.

That just boosted the expected impact of runners Javaris Hurt, Jamel Cooper, and Asa Wall, and pass-catchers Wall and Bryce McDonel.

Wall, Abe Gainous, and Lane Rhodes team for nearly 22 tackles to lead a defense that’s allowed only 31 points in the last five games and only seven in two playoff games. Brayden Faulkner, Malek Dorsey, and Rhodes each have three interceptions, and McDonel leads with five passes defended.

All in all, doing what John Milledge does, ending the season where John Milledge ends seasons.

“You’ve been kind of gritting your teeth, trying to go week to week, like we tell these kids to do,” Wall said. “And you blink, and here you are.

“I feel like everything’s coming together.”

Again.