Win over Northside paid huge dividends for Jones County

GRAY -- The county was named back in 1807 for U. S. representative James Jones.

The next big news came 15 years later when Bibb County was created. Since then, huge happenings haven’t been in abundance.

Certainly, construction of the high school was a game-changer. Then came the new high school, nearly 30 years ago, that no doubt was inspirational as locals eventually expected what most locals in the South expect: a good high school football team to grow a social aspect.

It has taken a long time for that to happen, and the anniversary of perhaps Jones County’s biggest athletics accomplishment is only a few days away. That’s when Jones County, known more for potential than accomplishments in football, did the unthinkable and unexpected.

With a brash new head coach who had drastically changed the offense and the mentality, the Greyhounds stunned top-ranked Northside 45-37. Wrap up Rudy, Hickory High School’s basketball team (“Hoosiers”) and the U.S. hockey team in 1980 into a purple uniform to sum up what happened that night.

Northside head coach Kevin Kinsler said the Eagles prepared for an improved Jones County team. The Greyhounds’ first three wins were by a 151-29 margin. Those are Northside-type numbers, not Jones County-type numbers, so that got Kinsler’s attention.

“We knew Jones County had a good football team before we played them,” he said. “That was obvious by how they had played the first few weeks of the season.”

But still, it was Jones County and Northside, where one had outscored the other 190-27 in the previous five meetings, starting with a 12-6 Eagles win in 1963.

“Some of the kids that haven’t been on that stage before, they’re gonna be kind of nervous,” said Walker Juhan, who was set to be part of that 2014 team as a senior running back before tearing an ACL in the summer and could only watch the preparation a year ago. “Not scared. Well, some of them will be a little scared.”

Or not.

“The attitude of the players I was around (was), ‘Oh, we’re better than Northside,’ ” said Juhan, who was part of 49-21 and 35-0 losses the previous two seasons. “OK, we might have a chance.”

The Greyhounds trailed all of 16 seconds, countering a lead-losing field goal by Northside with a 71-yard touchdown run by Chandler Ramage. Jones County spent the rest of the game keeping Northside at bay. Then it was over, a win that stunned Northside, awakened the region, surprised the state and put Jones County into a football glow it had never felt.

The glow touched the entire athletics program, which went on to a highly successful 2014-15 year in quite good shape. The football, boys basketball and baseball programs all reached the GHSA Class AAAAA quarterfinals, with baseball making it to the semifinals.

“We realized last year that the success football had, it made everything else better, every other sport (was) better,” said Barry Veal, in his second full year as the school’s full-time athletics director after retiring as the Greyhounds’ successful longtime baseball head coach. “It was a better climate at the school. It’s just amazing what a good football season will do to you.”

Justin Rogers was used to big wins as the offensive coordinator at Griffin, which went undefeated and won the Class AAAA title in his final year. The Greyhounds’ head coach got a better picture of Jones County’s appetite after the Northside win.

“That’s when it let me know this community was hungry for something,” he said. “They were proud to compete with the elite.”

The bragging rights for football didn’t stop with the win as the Greyhounds did what they hadn’t done before: built on success, albeit not without a few hiccups.

There was a 35-16 loss at Lakeside-Evans during which quarterback Bradley Hunnicutt suffered rib and hip injuries. That played a huge impact in the Greyhounds’ struggles a week later in a 45-15 to Houston County at McConnell-Talbert Stadium, where they take on Northside on Thursday.

But Jones County, going against tradition, resumed rolling, winning two straight by 27 and 33 points, respectively, before knocking off Warner Robins 31-21 to make the playoffs.

And there was no “Gee, this is nice” one-and-done postseason trip. The Greyhounds went on the road and edged Carver-Columbus 13-12 and Kell 33-31 and then were four seconds from flooring Mays on the road only to have the Raiders to pull off a final-play game-winner in the quarterfinals.

The 13 games played in 2014 were the most in program history, and it was only the third time Jones County had played at least 12 games. The highlight video for Jones County football was not a long one, yet the Greyhounds still played before a supportive and often sizable crowd.

“Jones County’s been hungry,” Veal said. “We told (Rogers) when we were interviewing him. (Then-principal Chuck) Gibson (said), ‘Hey, when this place wins in football, it goes crazy.’ It certainly has.”

The glory days of Jones County football are few.

The Georgia High School Football Historians Association lists 1945 as Jones County’s first football game and 1947 as the first true full season, eight games. The Greyhounds have three wins this season, with that total matching or passing the win total for 31 different seasons since 1947.

They have four winless and five one-win seasons and only 20 winning seasons. Last year’s first 10-win season topped only two nine-win and three eight-win seasons in all that time.

Jeff Lee was the head coach for five seasons from 1998-2002, had the last season of more than seven wins (9-3 in 2001) and went 26-27. The Northside win had little company in the “big win” category.

“We beat Westlake here for a football region championship when they had Pacman Jones,” Veal said of the 2001 season. “That was probably, since I’ve been here, the two biggest football games.”

And barring a collapse, Jones County will have consecutive winning seasons for only the sixth time. The program has finished above .500 three straight times only three times, and not since 1987-89 when the Greyhounds went 19-14 under John “Bubba” Williams.

So as the clock slipped past 10:15 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2014 and Jones County put the final touches on an upset nobody objectively saw coming, athletics changed for the Greyhounds. Jones County is catching up in a football arms race that long ago trickled down to the high school level. Veal said the future holds assorted renovations, including the weight room and assorted upgrades connected to the football stadium, which he estimates was built just before he arrived at Jones County.

More interest means more players, which means more costly uniforms and equipment. While Rogers would no doubt like some of the football technological toys of his colleagues, he happily points out that the Greyhounds will play six games before they suit up in the same uniform for the second time. They broke out gray attire Friday against Greenbrier for the first time and left the Wolfpack black and blue with a 70-7 loss.

It all leads to this week, the rematch against a state powerhouse, defending region and state champion, coming at one of Georgia’s top high school football facilities.

Northside seniors rarely deal with revenge, primarily to make sure they leave with a win over Warner Robins in their final season, and now they have to avoid being the being the senior class that suffers the first loss to Houston County.

Now, at least for this year perhaps, Jones County is on that revenge radar. Of Northside. And there is no doubt some longtime regulars at Greyhound Field didn’t expect to see that.

What Rogers likes is the sign that Jones County is becoming the kind of program it wasn’t. And he said Jones County is preparing like, well, a region contender and a ranked team is supposed to. It’s about business.

“I think my little old kids bought in going back to last year, bought in what we were selling, in the fact that it’s a process, yearly, monthly, daily, of doing the little things consistently to be good,” Rogers said. “If you do those things consistently, things will take care of itself.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2015 at 9:43 PM with the headline "Win over Northside paid huge dividends for Jones County ."