The Lee County Trojans continued to amaze everyone with an incredible run through the 2018 season, finishing with a 15-0 record en route to a football state championship in GHSA Class 6A. Lee County finished off their first ever undefeated season by defeating fellow Region 1-6A rival Northside (Warner Robins) by a 14-0 score.
The title was the team’s second consecutive state championship and put coach Dean Fabrizio’s Trojans in select company: Since the GHSA began crowning a state champion in 1947, Lee County became just the 13th school to win back-to-back state titles in the state’s two highest classifications, including 6A and 7A.
Preseason polls had Lee County as the team to beat in Georgia’s Class 6A. After all, Lee County was the defending state champion, and with their roster, the Trojans were a unanimous No. 1 pick to go all the way once again. Fabrizio knew that the challenge would be managing the high expectations of his football team. So, he and his staff decided to come up with a team motto that would hopefully keep the players grounded.
“We decided to adopt the motto, ‘stay humble and hungry,’” Fabrizio said. “we talked to the kids about not letting all the praise and attention go to their heads.”
The season started with a 41-point win over Dougherty High. Then, a familiar name in the world of Fabrizio came calling to the home stadium of Lee County in Dr. Phillips High of Orlando. Fabrizio was an assistant coach for the Florida school in the ’90s, and their head coach, Rodney Wells, played for Fabrizio during that time. The game was a much anticipated contest between two defending state champions, as Dr. Phillips had won the FHSA Class 8A championship in 2017. In the end, however, Lee prevailed easily with a 35-3 win.
Another school where Fabrizio formerly coached as an assistant, Peach County, visited Leesburg in Week 3, and the Trojans recorded their first shutout of the year 33-0. After breezing through the remainder of their non-region schedule with wins over Americus Sumter, Southwest (Macon), and Thomson to go 5-0, the region portion of the schedule arrived. Lee County opened with a 24-7 win over Northside (Warner Robins), a foreshadowing of things to come.
Perhaps the biggest win outside of the championship game came in the second region game of the season for Lee County. The Trojans defeated the mighty Valdosta Wildcats by a 63-7 score, handing Valdosta their worst defeat in school history. The win also avenged a 3-point loss to the ‘Cats from the season before that was the only blemish on Lee’s 2017 record.
Lee County then recorded its fourth shutout of the year with a 45-0 win over Houston County to improve to 9-0 on the season. The regular season finale pitted Lee against its state championship opponent from a season ago, Coffee High School. Unlike that game, an overtime affair that saw Lee win the state title in exciting fashion, this was no such contest, as Lee County won 38-7 to close out the regular season at 10-0 overall.
A 4-0 region mark was good enough for the top seed in Region 1-6A heading into the state playoffs. There, Lee rolled through Mundy’s Mill, Effingham County, Creekview, and Lanier to advance to its second consecutive state championship game.
On the big stage of the Class 6A state championship game, held for the first time at Mercedez Benz Stadium, Lee County battled with a familiar foe: region opponent Northside (Warner Robins). In a hard fought game that saw the vaunted Trojan defense come up big, Lee had its lowest offensive output of the season with just two touchdowns, but enough to win its second straight GHSA title 14-0.
Lee County received an invitation to participate in the four-team Geico Champions Bowl Series, a high school showcase event matching state champions from Georgia, Washington, Maryland, and Arizona. Lee County was chosen to play St. Frances Academy, a state champion from Maryland, in their final game of the season.
The game was held at Lee County’s stadium in Leesburg in front of a capacity crowd and was also shown to a national audience on ESPNU. St. Frances won the game 43-14 in the exhibition contest. The loss was the only blemish in an otherwise perfect season for the Trojans. Lee County finished 15-1.
