Lady Bulldogs Make History as First South Georgia High School to Win State Title, Finish 23-0
Thomasville High School girls soccer head coach Lucas Kimmel thought he may have a pretty good team heading into the 2026 season.
After all, the 2025 team graduated only three players, and with so much experience returning from the previous season’s 17-win team, there was a lot for the Lady Bulldogs to build on.
But Kimmel had no way of predicting that this year’s team would win 23 straight games without a loss, including a win against the same team it had lost to in the playoffs a year earlier.
But that’s exactly what happened, and the Thomasville Lady Bulldogs claimed the program’s first state championship.
“We had a lot of returners and a lot of girls who had vastly improved since the previous year, but starting the season I knew we were going to be very competitive and that we would make a very good playoff run,” Kimmel said. “But as far as making it as far as we did and having the season that we did, that didn’t become evident until about halfway through the season. We competed and played against some larger schools and we showed just how well we could compete with them, and that gave us that boost of confidence that we could compete with anybody in the state.”
Thomasville not only competed against those larger schools but actually picked up wins against Class 6A Lowndes and Colquitt County, as well as Class 5A Thomas County Central over the first six games of the season.
And it wasn’t just confidence that gave Thomasville the edge they needed.
In a sport where scoring is usually minimal and the typical strategy relies on more defense than offense, preventing goals is often more valuable than scoring them. Teams that can do both well give themselves quite an advantage.
The Thomasville Lady Bulldogs put on a dominant display of both offense and suffocating defense.
The team finished 23-0, the only undefeated team in the state. Seventeen of their 23 wins were by shutout. They scored 139 goals and gave up only eight. They conceded just two goals in five playoff games.
Yes, defense wins championships. In soccer, scoring an average of almost 6.5 goals per game does too.
“I think that during about half of those games our goalkeeper Audrina Hance never touched the ball,” Kimmel said.
