Last Friday night’s football action saw one local team reach the highest point of their season, while another hit their lowest point and ended their season with a heart-breaking loss.
The Starr’s Mill Panthers (9-3) new to Class AAAA, reached the state quarterfinals for the second year in a row. Last year, the Panthers hosted Brookwood in the Class AAAAA quarterfinals. This year, the Panthers will travel to Dallas, Ga. to take on the East Paulding Raiders. Starr’s Mill made this game by handing the Baldwin Braves (10-2) a 19-14 loss.

Starr’s Mill got an enormous effort from Brandon Witta in the win. Witta scored two of the three Panther touchdowns and blocked a field goal in the first half. One of Witta’s scores was on a six yard pass from quarterback Robby Davis, while the other was on a 71 yard touchdown run. The Panthers other score came off of a touchdown pass from Davis to Nick Fevella. Davis threw for 169 yards.

Though the defense gave up close to 200 yards of offense in the first half, they came up big on key drives, including a huge stop in the first half that had the Braves miss three passes and get stopped just shy of a first down.

The Panthers now have the honor of playing on the road for the fourth straight week.

Their opponent, the East Paulding Raiders (11-1) have won eight games in a row. In eight of their 11 wins this season, the Raiders have held their opponents to seven points or less, including four shutouts. They have only allowed 99 total points in 12 games this season and they have scored 483.

Starr’s Mill has proven themselves up to the challenge in all the weeks leading up to this one and they have another obstacle ahead of them this week in their way to a spot in the Georgia Dome. The Panthers, winners of five games in a row, have outscored their opposition 168-48 in that span, including a 56-20 edge in the playoffs. They made the plays when they needed them last week and know a better effort will be needed to secure a win this Friday.

The winner of this game will meet the winner of Creekside and Marist in the semi-finals.

Landmark Christian’s second round playoff game against Warren County didn’t go as well as they had hoped. Landmark started the game recovering an on-side kick and driving to the Screaming Devil two yard line, but a fumble prevented a touchdown and Warren County scored two minutes later after a 77 yard run and a two yard run for a touchdown. They missed their extra point and Landmark quarterback Matt Moody put his team ahead 7-6 with a touchdown run. The two teams would trade touchdowns for the rest of the first quarter and half of the second quarter. Moody ran for the team’s second score and connected with Jimmy Eden on a two yard touchdown pass with just over seven minutes remaining in the half. Warren County would strike a huge blow though a minute later with a touchdown, followed by a fumble recovery on a Landmark kickoff return and another touchdown and two point conversion 22 seconds later. Moody would lead another scoring drive and run for his third touchdown of the game just before the half. Warren County’s lead was trimmed to 35-28.

In the second half, Landmark shut Warren County down until there was just over four minutes remaining in the third quarter. Early in the fourth quarter, Moody ran five yards for his fourth touchdown of the game to cut the lead to seven points. Landmark stopped Warren County two more times and went on one more scoring drive but it was stopped short when they couldn’t convert a fourth and 10.

Warren County got the ball back and ran out the clock to preserve the win.