Only One South Georgia School Has Won A State Championship In Georgia’s Largest Classification In The Past 15 Seasons
As we approach the 2025 Georgia high school football postseason, fans of teams south of Macon, especially in Class 6A, are hoping that this will finally be the year that their favorite team can do what only one other south Georgia team has been able to do since 2009:
Advance to and win the big game under the big top of Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Last season, the lone south Georgia team in ANY class to win a state championship was Toombs County. The Bulldogs are located in Lyons. Ga, in the Southeastern part of the state. They won the GHSA Class A Division-I State Title.
(Sorry, Carver Columbus is a West Georgia team, located in Columbus, a West Georgia town.)
Regardless, my main point is directed at the state’s highest classification, where for the past 15 seasons, from 2010-2024, the classification 6A/7A has produced just 2 south Georgia state championships of the 15 total champs over that period.
Who was it?
The 2014 and 2015 Colquitt County Packers.
Just one school, with two state championships.
( It is worth pointing out that the 2017 and 2018 Colquitt teams made it to the 7A state title games, but lost both times).
Before the 2014 state championship, you have to go back to 2009, when it was Camden County who won a state championship. Coach Jeff Herron’s Wildcats won it the previous season also, in 2008.
Lowndes won the title in 2007, to give South Georgia a rare three-year period when the state’s largest classification state champion came from Region 1, the southernmost region in Georgia.
But, for fans of the South Georgia teams in the highest classification, it’s been quite a dry spell of state championships since those Colquitt County 2014 and 2015 state titles.
South Georgia Legends Jeff Herron and Rush Propst Discuss South Ga Title Drought
Why Has South Georgia Fallen Behind?
We asked the two coaches whose south Georgia teams last won those state championships in 2008 and 2009, then in 2014 and 2015.
That would be Camden County’s Jeff Herron and Colquitt’s Rush Propst
Here is what they had to say about the south Georgia championship dry spell in the state’s highest classification
Rush Propst
Propst said it comes down to winning your region, less travel, superb talent, and a little bit of luck always helps.
“Winning the region is the most important thing for a south Georgia team when it comes to having success in the playoffs” Propst said. “For a south Georgia team to win it (a state championship) they have got to win their region first and foremost.”
Propst said that’s because of less travel that winning your region affords teams.
“ I think the biggest reason is the travel. The travel will wear on you. If teams don’t know how to handle the travel, it will eventually wear on you and it will affect you in the playoffs,” Propst said.
Propst said when his teams were forced to travel long distances, he always advocated leaving on Thursday for a Friday game.
“My administration would allow us to travel up the day before when we would travel a long way off, especially in the playoffs,” Propst said.
“You have to travel smart and acclimate to your new surroundings on the road.”
The former Packers coach said winning your region can help to cut out one or two rounds of travel.
“In 2014, we played all four rounds at home,” Propst recalls to illustrate the importance of home playoff games.
“We finished 15-0 and beat Archer in the State Championship in Atlanta.”
“The next year, in 2015, we had an even better team, but had to go on the road to play South Forsyth in the quarterfinals because we lost a coin flip.”
“They were running the ball down our throat, and we just couldn’t stop them. But, they decided to throw the ball, and we came up with a pick 6 interception which saved the day, and we won. But, we were getting beat. That’s a long trip and they had us on the ropes, but we pulled it out with a little bit of luck. That always helps,” he said.
The 2017 state playoff run by Colquitt County is the perfect example of why winning the region title is important.
The Packers finished as the number 3 seed in the region, and were forced to go on the road for every playoff game, all against Atlanta-area teams. That included the state championship game at North Gwinnett.
Colquitt lost 19-17.
Jeff Herron
Jeff Herron’s Camden County teams won back to back Class 7A state championships in 2008 and 2009
He also won a state championship with one of those Atlanta area teams-Grayson, in 2011. So Herron has been on both sides of the conversation.
“ When I was at Camden we used to say “If you aren’t better than the other team, then you gotta be different,” Herron said.
Camden was most certainly different than just about every other large classification team in their approach on offense, running the Wing-T. The unconventional run-heavy offense relied on a ton of misdirection, and emphasized ball control.
While many of the state’s smaller schools relied on the wing-t, there just weren’t many of the bigger schools that ran it.
And that meant opponents of Camden County, even in the state playoffs, and state championship, didn’t really know how to defend it.
Herron pointed out that the other Region 1 school that had success in the state finals besides Colquitt was the team that won it the year before his Camden team did
“Randy McPherson ran that same type of offense that we did, and he did pretty well with it, too,” Herron said.
McPherson led Lowndes to the Class 7A state championship in 2004, 2005, and again in 2007.
Herron also pointed out that Propst also did things different, but not with a particular offensive style.
“Rush had a lot of success with the nutrition program at Colquitt County, and no one else had been doing anything like that in terms of supplying their players with a full time nutrition program like he did,” Herron admitted.
He added that the travel schedule Propst introduced when he arrived at Colquitt was different than anyone else.
“His teams would leave a day early and go up and practice and they weren’t traveling so far on the day of the game.”
Herron echoed what Propst had told us, which was talent.
“ When I was at Grayson, we had superior talent to the teams in South Georgia, and that’s because the kids were moving in one after another, and that’s been the case up there with those Atlanta teams for the past 20 years.”
Heading into this final weekend of the 2025 regular season, Region 1-6A has the potential for a three-way tie among Lowndes, Colquitt County, and Valdosta.
Whoever wins the top seed in Region 1-6A will no question have an advantage, both with their travel situation, and opponent.
At least in the beginning.
Although things are subject to change,
The #1 seed would likely face in order:
Round 1: Dacula
Round 2: Norcross
Round 3: McEachern
Round 4: Buford
Round 5 (State Championship) Grayson
Maybe this will be the year..?
