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My Two Cents
While we will never be satisfied with a “moral” victory, we sure do have a great deal to be proud of and thankful for. By my calculations only 8 schools have been to the Georgia Dome more than Early County. That’s all schools-not just AA. We win with more frequency than 90% of a all high school teams in this state. To be sure we have a down year here and there, but we sustain winning a whole better than losing.We don’t stay down for more than a season. 6 and 4 and a trip to the playoffs is not a down year in many places, just the places that are used to playing at the highest level. Places like Early County. Our football program sets it goals high for good reason. We have done virtually everything a program can do over the last 42 years except win a state championship. We played for the crown in the 70’s, the 80’s (sorry folks, but the Pepperell game was in reality the championship game), the 90’s, and in 2001. We have already been to the semi finals 3 times since the turn of the century. Sooner or later we are going to win the whole thing, maybe sooner than you think. Saturday’s loss was different from any loss I have witnessed from a Bobcat team. They outplayed arguably one of the best AA teams ever assembled. Charlton has won 42 games over the last three years and is playing in its fourth straight final. Right now the Indians are as good as it gets in our class. But Early County looked like the better team Saturday. Whipped them for three quarters before disaster struck in the form of an untimely turnover. Most folks around the state were shocked we could even play with the Indians. I came into the Georgia Dome thinking we were underdogs and left feeling like the best team lost. Feeling like the football gods owe us one now. Maybe two. No team should play as well as our Bobcats did Saturday and lose. But that is what happened, a truth that is hard to live with in the dark days of winter when July and a new season seem so far away. The future looks bright for 2007. The Bobcats return 16 or 17 players who started or played a lot in 2006. But we say good bye to 18 players who not only kept the Bobcat tradition of winning alive but set a standard that I think all future additions will be judged by. Not a lot of people outside the county line thought much of this team. But they went out and earned respect from the whole state. They didn’t win a championship, but they played like champions. To the senior football players I leave you a heart felt “Thank you” and the words of Theodore Roosevelt. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Great job guys. Teddy would have been proud of you.
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