Newspaper Page Text
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FRIDAY,
DECEMBER 15, 2006
The Home Journal's
SANDLOT
■ TtfrrvMv: nnffV
ON DECK
High school
Basketball
Today
■ Windsor at Westfield, 6 p.m.
Saturday
■ Westfield at Central Fellowship,
4 p.m.
High school swimming
Today
■ Warner Robins at Landmark
Christian. 5 p.m.
Saturday
■ Houston County/Northside
Invite. 9:30 a m., at Fort Valley
State University
High school football
Today
■ Marist at Northside, 7:30 p.m.
IN BRIEF
Perry Takedown Club to
host golf tournament
The Perry Takedown Club
will host a golf tournament
Saturday. The format will be
two-man scramble. It will be
held at Perry Country Club with
a shotgun start beginning at 1
p.m. The cost includes lunch
and door prizes. Mulligans will
also be sold and strokes given.
The first-place team will receive
S4OO, second S2OO and third
SIOO. Contact Randy Moss at
988-6291 for more.
GPB to broadcast
championship games
Georgia Public Broadcasting
will present live broadcast of the
Georgia High School Association
football championships today
and Saturday. The broadcast
today will begin with Northside's
7:30 p.m. game against Marist
in McConnell-Talbert Stadium.
It will continue Saturday
from Walter Cantrell Stadium
in Powder Springs, beginning at
7:30 p.m. and with the AAAAA
championships featuring the
Roswell Hornets versus the
Peachtree Ridge Lions.
Warner Robins Rec to hold
Christmas camp
The Warner Robins
Recreation Department is regis
tering boys and girls ages 7-12
for Holly Days Christmas Camp
to be held Dec. 21 through Jan.
4, 2007 (Christmas holidays
for Houston County Schools),
Monday-Friday. 7:30 a.m.-5:30
p.m. except Dec. 25 and Jan.
1, 2007. Each day. according to
a release, will be full of games,
songs and seasonal crafts.
Experienced camp counselors,
campers are well-supervised,
structured program. The cost is
$75 for city residents: sllO for
county residents and $l4O for
out-of-county.
Call the department at 478-
929-6946 for more information.
YMCA offers special
sign-up promotion
The YMCA is currently offer
ing a special promotion where
they are giving away one free
month of gym membership to
all new members. The center
offers: gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, fit
kidz, dance and much more. A
family membership consists of
an SBS joiner’s fee plus the first
month of S4B. Under the promo
tion, you pay SBS and the first
month is free.
The offer will expire Dec. 31.
Museum to host its
annual walk/runs
The 11th annual Museum of
Aviation Foundation marathon,
half marathon and 5K run/walk
will be held at the Museum of
Aviation Jan. 13, 2007.
All three courses are USA
Track and Field certified and all
threes are also run on Robins
Air Force Base. Runners and
walkers whose registrations are
postmarked by Jan. 5, 2007 are
guaranteed, according to the
release, a “quality colorful long
sleeve shirt on race day.”
To register or for more infor
mation call Race Director John
Hunter at 478-926-6686 (day) or
478-953-5335 (evening) or email
him at hunterjh@cox.net.
Championship day
Northside hosts Marist for state title
By MATTHEW BROWN
Journal Sports Writer
What better setting for the
first-ever meeting between
two football-rich high school
programs with two of the
more respected coaches in
the game today.
It’s Northside High of
Warner Robins against
Marist School out of Atlanta
for the 2006 GHSA Class
AAAA state champion
ship tonight at McConnell-
Talbert Stadium.
It’s the 14-0 Northside
Eagles against the 13-
1 Marist War Eagles. It’s
Conrad Nix, who recently
won his 200th game with
Northside against Alan
Chadwick, who has 251
career wins as Marist head
coach since 1985.
Marist has one edge in its
football history in that it
already has two state cham
pionships from the 1989 and
2003 seasons.
Northside has seen its
share of championship
game appearances, includ
ing last year’s heartbreak
ing 13-10 loss on the road to
Statesboro, but is looking at
this season to break through
at No. 1 for the first time
ever.
“I think it’s going to be
a pretty physical game,
basically running,” said
senior cornerback Charles
McKenzie. “They will sur
prise you when they throw
the ball. We have to be ready
for all of that.”
“They’re going to do a lot
of things different,” said
senior tight end Brett Moore.
“They have a good middle
linebacker (No. 44), and
there will be a lot of stunts
and things like that. We’ll
have to have our heads up,
pay attention. The receivers
will have to catch (the ball);
the running backs will have
to run. It will be a total team
effort.”
“Obviously they run a
quality, sound program, one
with a lot of class,” said
Nix about Marist. “One that
you would tend to expect
from a school with that sta
tus. They do an excellent job
in their scheme of things,
utilizing their personnel,
putting their personnel at
the right places to utilize
their scheme, whatever that
might be.
“We’re going to have to
be very exact and conscious
of what our responsibilities
are.”
Marist’s lone loss of the
2006 season came in game
No. 2 by three points, 27-24,
My suggestion: Let’s boycott the bowls
I hate whiners. Those pundits
who are crying because Florida
is playing for the championship
need to stop crying about the injus
tice to Michigan and start worrying
about television ratings for the big
game.
Who in Georgia, Tennessee,
Arkansas and the other 45 states
are going to watch Ohio State play
Florida? Maybe some unreconstruct
ed southerners will get a charge out
of a team from the South playing a
team from the North; I’d guess most
of us don’t care. Don’t forget, some
Ohio units were with Sherman dur
ing his March to the Sea.
If Michigan wanted to qualify for
the big game, it should have beaten
Ohio State. The Wolverines had their
chances but lost.
Nobody wants to see a repeat of
that game, but I’m hard put to get
excited about an Ohio State/Florida
match up.
I hate Florida. I hate everything
from their dangling chads to their
ACC and SEC football teams.
Sports
ffisrT' am -Wf .. :
ENI/Gary Harmon
Northside head coach Conrad Nix talks to the players during a timeout in the Georgia Dome this past weekend.
to Tucker High. The regu
lar season ended with a 31-
14 win against St. Pius X
(a rival to the War Eagles
much like Warner Robins
is to Northside), the team
Northside narrowly beat 20-
17 in the semifinals.
In the playoffs, Marist
beat Creekside and state No.
1 player Eric Berry 24-6 in
the quarterfinals and topped
East Paulding, a team aver
aging almost 40 points a
game, 27-7, in the Georgia
Dome.
“They certainly shut them
down,” said Nix about the
War Eagles’ win in the
Dome. “They put a lot of
pressure on the quarterback.
Offensively, East Paulding
couldn’t stop them. Whether
(Marist) just blocked the
man responsible for the dive
or (East Paulding) misread
it, they couldn’t take care of
it. Consequently the fullback
ran for 200-plus yards.”
Marist runs an option
offense similar to what St.
Pius X threw at Northside
last week in Atlanta. Nix
said there are naturally some
differences in the systems in
Joe Sersey
Journal
Correspondent
it until the end. To beat Tennessee,
Florida needed last-minute heroics.
Even in the SEC championship,
Florida did just enough to win but
too little to dominate. I’ll bet the
Razorbacks, Bulldogs and Volunteers
left the field shaking their heads
and saying to themselves they should
have won.
That’s why I hate the BCS.
I’ve written about the hated com
puter generated top 10 list before.
I’ve even offered a plan for substitut
ing bowl games for playoff games.
The top 10 list comes from the
votes of writers combined with a
II
I think it’s going to ho a grotty physical
game, basically running.
They’re going to do a lot of things
different,
smm Brett Mtocm 99
terms of the athletes and the
designs, but the execution is
certainly the same.
“The quarterback is a lot
like St. Pius’ in that he’s big,
6-4 or something like that,
and the fullback is a big guy
with a lot of speed,” he said.
“We’ll have to get low and
make a play.”
So is it an advantage to
Northside to face a similar
offense from one week to
the next? It comes down to
something like a chess game
because Marist can study
the way St. Pius attacked
the Eagle defense.
When looking at
Florida’s record,
the Gators won 12
games and lost one.
In most of their
wins, though, they
didn’t go out and
really beat anyone.
They didn’t domi
nate.
Against Georgia,
the Bulldogs were in
“At the same time, they
can watch us on video and
see how we react to things
and try to counteract it,”
said Nix. “Try to project
what we’re going to do and
how we’re going to do it.
We have to adjust to what
they’re doing.”
On the defensive side,
Marist has only given up 20
points in four playoff games
and had a stretch in the reg
ular season of allowing just
19 points in four contests.
“You don’t get where we
both are if you are not good
in all areas,” said Nix. “They
complicated math formula that only
the computers understand and after
the data are fed into the banks,
the confounded contraption wheezes,
groans, and rattles. The result is
barfed onto a release and passed onto
the vultures in the media to dissemi
nate and rehash.
Nobody likes the BCS except the
guys paid to run it, and the promot
ers who make millions off the Armpit
Bowl featuring 0-10 Podunk Skunks
and 1-9 Katmandu Hairballs.
Again, I submit my plan. Cut the
regular season schedules to 10 or
11 games. Use the bowl games as
playoffs or region championships or
better yet, use bowl games for teams
with excellent records who didn’t
make the playoffs.
Cutting the schedule one or two
games eliminates Division I teams
beating up on Division I-AA teams to
pad their records. That won’t matter.
Rutgers wins its conference, makes
the playoffs and battles for a spot in
the big game.
See SERSEY, page iB
SECTION
B
do a good job moving people
around, moving late. After
the ball is snapped they
do a good bit of slanting.
Hopefully we’ll hit a play or
two where they slant from.
“The kicking game is real
ly good. The guy kicks it off
in the end zone if he wants
to. They try 40-plus yard
field goals regularly. If they
get the ball on the other side
of the 50, around the 35,
they are going to try a field
goal.”
So the contest could come
down to intangibles like
See STATE,page iB
Bear grapplers
beat Northside
From staff reports
Northside hosted Houston
County - it was supposed to
be Creekview as well, but it J
cancelled out - for a wrestling ;
meet Tuesday.
The final: Bears 45, Eagles
30.
Still, “I am not too disap- ;
pointed with our guys’ perfor
mance,” said Northside coach
Dusty Dykes, “because we •
are still missing several from
our varsity lineup. It’s hard
to judge how well we will per
form this year because we have
wrestlers who are still playing
football.
“I am proud of the effort our
young guys have out forth and '
it gives us a good sign that our •
program will continue to do
well for years to come.”
Two concrete things \
See GRAPPLERS, page lB