Every game is a playoff game for Houston County, Northside
His team’s win over Macon County was less than 10 minutes old, and it was a solid win.
Then Northside head coach Kevin Kinsler started moving ahead.
“Now,” he said after the 45-6 win, “we’re fixin’ to go into that meat grinder.”
That would be GHSA Region 1-6A, of which the College Football Playoff race might take a backseat to.
It features Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 6 in the latest Georgia Sports Writers Association poll. A fifth team was ranked for the first few weeks of the season, Coffee.
Among all teams in the state, Maxpreps ranks Valdosta No. 4, Northside No. 6, Lee County No. 15 and Houston County No. 20. Coffee is No. 28.
The region is interesting in a variety of ways, from the tradition of Northside and Valdosta to the program turnarounds at Houston County and Lee County and a lifetime wing-T head coach at Coffee suddenly running the spread.
The region has a Middle Georgia influence outside of Houston County and Northside.
Lee County head coach Dean Fabrizio and offensive line coach Nathan Clark were assistants at Peach County. Warner Robins head coach Mike Chastain was the offensive coordinator for three seasons under Fabrizio.
Valdosta head coach Alan Rodemaker had the same job at Peach County for the 1999-2000 seasons, going 15-8.
Robby Pruitt is in his fifth season at Coffee, which followed eight straight seasons at Fitzgerald, all with at least 10 wins, which followed a 6-4 season as head coach at Warner Robins in 2003, which followed three additional seasons at Fitzgerald.
Pruitt is the dean of the region’s head coaches with a 160-41-1 record in Georgia, having moved here after induction into the Florida High School Hall of Fame in 2000, at the age of 38, with a 156-28 record at two high schools.
He left Florida with seven state championships at those two schools.
His region colleagues are veterans, but have an average of only five years — including this one — as head coaches.
On the other hand, they all win.
Kinsler is about the same age as Pruitt, but is in only his seventh season as a head coach. His Eagles have won 90.4 percent of the time in that span.
Fabrizio is 49-31 in his eighth season, having taken over an 0-10 team just three seasons removed from going 10-2. And that broke a streak of five straight losing seasons.
Fabrizio’s first season was his only losing season.
Lassiter is the young one, with a 34-9 record in his fourth season as a head coach, rejuvenating a program. And he has yet to crack 40 years old.
Rodemaker is in only his third season as a head coach, but he was the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator for six seasons and part of a 49-20 run with top-notch defenses.
His boss during that time? Former Peach County head coach Rance Gillespie.
That followed a year as an assistant at Byrnes in South Carolina, marking his return to football after several years in the business world.
The region is fairly old-school, some of the four- and five-star recruits — like Houston County quarterback Jake Fromm and Lee County defensive lineman Aubrey Solomon — notwithstanding. And there really isn’t an overflow of them, giving a blue-collar feel to all five teams.
Northside, Valdosta and Lee County are defense-oriented and run first, while Houston County and Coffee put the ball in the air more. That will lead to some serious battles of Xs and Os, as well as matchups.
Like Friday night’s tussle in Leesburg with Houston County and Lee County, pitting the irresistible force of Fromm and the immovable object that Solomon is.
The Bears are likely without center D.J. Journey (knee) and will man that position by committee, meaning four-star tackle Trey Hill may get some center snaps and get matched up with Solomon.
That would match a 6-foot-4, 320-pound junior against a 6-2, 305-pound senior.
“He moves pretty good,” Hill said of Solomon, who has five sacks and nine quarterback hurries. “Like a linebacker.”
Houston County guard Malcolm Lawson said the Bears’ 28-24 scare at Spalding might have come at the right time, especially for his unit.
“They’re aggressive, they (come) to the ball … as hard as they can,” said Lawson of Lee County. “If we don’t step up to the plate this game, we’re pretty much not going to win.”
The Northside-Valdosta game pits two similar teams, so what happens up front there is typically vital. That, and the one key stumble.
“It’s going to come down to if somebody blinks,” Kinsler said. “Or the mistakes that can kill you in a big game.”
And every week is legitimately big-game week in this region, with a quality team sitting home after the 10th game.
“That’s the thing nobody wants to talk about,” Lassiter said. “There is going to be a fifth-place team that is a really good football team that’s gonna go to the house.”
That the region is small led to some interesting non-region games, but that’s a positive.
“If we had to play this kind of a physical schedule for seven games, you kinda worry about where you’ll be at the end, if you’ve got enough for a playoff run with all the physicality of it,” Kinsler said. “It’s just who’s going to be standing at the end.”
This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Every game is a playoff game for Houston County, Northside."