Southwest Atlanta championship team to be honored at state finals

Score Atlanta and the Georgia High School Association will honor the 50th-year anniversary of Southwest Atlanta’s state football championship in 1973. The title was the first in football by an all-black team in the GHSA.

The Southwest team was led by quarterback Anthony Flanagan, who recently was inducted into the second class of the Georgia High School Football Hall of Fame. Flanagan passed away in 2001, but many of his teammates will be at the ceremony, which will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 13, between the Class 5A and Class 7A championship games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

In the 1973 championship game, Southwest, which finished 13-0, traveled to Americus and beat the Panthers 21-7, Americus was led by future Georgia Tech greats Mackel Harris and Kent Hill. Also that school year, Southwest won its second straight state basketball championship, also led by Flanagan.