Patriots, Raiders start strong in region

The start of the season didn’t go the way the Northeast Raiders and Southwest Patriots would have liked, but they certainly made up for that last week.

The Patriots and Raiders both won their GHSA Region 3-2A openers Friday with Southwest holding off Dodge County 26-19 to snap a three-game losing streak and Northeast getting its first win of the season with a 41-6 decision over Bleckley County.

Southwest is off this week, while Northeast heads to Dodge County in another region game.

“It makes everything better when you practice behind a win and you play a game behind a win,” Northeast head coach Bruce Mullen said. “It just makes everything better. The kids have more confidence; even the coaches’ meetings are better. Everything is better.”

Northeast opened the season with four losses, but three of them were close: a one-point loss to Lamar County, a six-point loss to Rutland and a 12-point loss to Central.

“We have been talking to the kids, telling them that we have been in every ballgame,” Mullen said. “We have played some pretty good teams, and we have been close. We have been telling our kids they haven’t been playing up to par, and if they had, things would turn around. They played hard, and they played well, and that was key.”

Southwest opened its season with a historic win over Westside, becoming the first Bibb County program to beat the Seminoles. But the Patriots then lost to Manchester, Central and Spalding, and only the Central game was close.

Still, they responded last week once region play got started. The Patriots and Raiders face off Oct. 7.

“It was a huge win. That’s what we focused on all week, just getting a region win,” Southwest head coach Joseph Dupree said. “We had lost three in a row, and getting that win gave the players some confidence and just showed them what it feels like to win again.”

Dublin is tied with Southwest and Northeast for first place in the region, while East Laurens is the third team with a region loss. Washington County plays its first region game this week at East Laurens, while the other region game this week pits Dublin against Bleckley County.

“That’s why I scheduled the non-region like I did against good football teams,” Dupree said of the tough region schedule. “Hopefully that will show us that we need to be ready to go and be ready to play every week. We can’t take a week off. It’s a very good region with a lot of tradition in the region.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2016 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Patriots, Raiders start strong in region."