Sequoyah is proud of its 38-28 victory over No. 6 Gainesville in the Class 5A first round. Just don’t call it an upset. “For our kids, they pretty much expected it, to be honest,” Sequoyah coach James Teter said. “Some people feel like we won in an upset, but our players felt like we had played well all year and that our region was tough enough.”

Callaway’s strategy was to keep the state’s leading receiver from deciding the game. The plan worked as Callaway conceded 245 rushing yards but held Morgan County's Jaylen Elder to four catches for 28 yards. Callaway scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns in a 33-26 come-from-behind victory over a previously undefeated and second-ranked team.

Athens Academy completed its first 10-win season and won its first region championship in five years Friday with a 34-28 victory over Rabun County. It's been a season of fourth-quarter heroics. Against Rabun County, Hampton Johnson threw a 68-yard TD pass to Keyon Standifer to break a 28-28 tie with 4:45 left.

Call it reloading. Say that tradition doesn’t graduate. The old clichés apply to Cartersville, a team that graduated all eight of its first-team all-region players and returned only five starters from last year’s state semifinal team. The Purple Hurricanes are 9-0, ranked No. 2 in Class 5A, and a victory from their ninth region championship in 11 years.

North Oconee had all manner of winning streaks on the line Friday night against Eastside. That’s 28 consecutive wins in region games, 34 in regular-season games, and 25 in home games. The latest game. between top-10 Class 4A teams, came down to one drive.

Manchester knows as well as anybody that one victory over a No. 1 team isn’t final. The Blue Devils beat No. 1-ranked Bowdon by one point to open the 2023 season, then lost to Bowdon by one point to end it in the championship game.

From a 22-game losing streak to 5-1 in less than two years, Woodstock has made a remarkable turnaround under second-year coach Dan Devine. The Wolverines of Cherokee County defeated 20-point favorite Creekview 28-21 last week to match their best start since 2000.

A year ago, Westside of Augusta lost to Aquinas when the Patriots’ two-point conversion failed in the final minute.This time, Westside made the play it needed. Primarily a running team, the Patriots used a 73-yard TD pass from Jaylen Stone to Jahvon Williams in the final three minutes to score a 21-16 victory.

Mount Zion of Jonesboro had lost 20 consecutive games when Willie Binyard became head coach in the summer of 2022, just weeks before the first game. “I had a lot of mentors say don’t take it. It’s a losing program, you can get stuck there,” Binyard said.

Toombs County was the preseason No. 1 team in Class A Division I in multiple human polls, including GHSF Daily’s. The Bulldogs’ only losses last season were to Class 2A finalists Pierce County and Rockmart. Now, Toombs is one class lower while returning QB T.J. Stanley and DB/WR Lagonza Hayward, their two most prominent players.

It’s never easy to win in Moultrie, and 14 points isn’t usually enough to do it. North Gwinnett won with defense Friday night, becoming the first team to hold Colquitt County without a touchdown since 2017 in a 14-3 victory.

Fannin County added more adventures to its new-heights tour last week under seventh-year head coach Chad Cheatham, an alumnus. The 28-7 victory over Rabun County was Fannin’s first over a ranked team since 1995. Fannin’s new ranking, No. 5 in Class A Division I, is the highest in school history.

Douglass was 11-2 as recently as 2019, but the program crashed during the COVID-19 season of 2020, going 0-5 and canceling several games. The Astros hired an alumnus, Arabia Mountain coach and former NFL player Stanley Pritchett. It took a year to make the playoffs, three to have a winning season and four to beat a top-10 team for the first time.