IT’S THEIR TIME
Class of 2013 football prospects step into spotlight
Here’s a look at some of the top rising seniors in Clayton and Henry counties, and a few players you might not know, but should.
Dutchtown, Forest Park ready for rematches in state playoffs
Dutchtown and Forest Park are quite familiar with their first round opponents in the boy’s soccer state tournament.
Area welcomes four new football coaches
Many high school football teams start spring practice next week, and four in Clayton and Henry counties will have a new head coach. Here’s a look at the new guys on the sideline and what they have in store for their respective programs.
Stage set for Glenn
Former Riverdale standout has the size and skills to make NFL draft history
Thanks to hindsight, the history Cordy Glenn is about to make appears earth-shattering — no football player from the Clayton or Henry counties has ever been selected in the first round of the NFL draft.
The swing queen
North Clayton senior Mariah Stackhouse is taking a humble road to the top thanks to her parents
Golf was just supposed to be Mariah Stackhouse’s hobby. Her parents, Ken and Sharon, knew golf was a corporate sport where business relationships are created and deals can be swung, in more ways than one.
Forest Park eager for next test
To learn about itself, Forest Park boy’s soccer team has dug deep into the implications of its matches this season.
SOCCER NOTEBOOK: Looking beyond wins and losses
Something’s going on with these soccer teams. Call it an identity crisis — they look like one team from afar, but a different one altogether upon closer examination.
RAPID RISE
After tough times in 2011, these teams found a way to get better ... fast
Sometimes, the difference between incompetent and competitive is just one player. Sometimes, it’s eight or nine.
Signings continue to add up for Union Grove baseball
Wolverines seniors Cole Murphy, Austin Smith and Logan Smith signed scholarships last Friday.
LUELLA PLAYING MIND GAMES
Coming off consecutive losses for the first time in two seasons, Luella baseball looks to get back on track
This hasn’t happened in quite some time. Forty-five regular season games, to be exact, spanning three seasons.
Bama signee Tomlinson hurts knee playing soccer
Henry County senior and Alabama football signee Dalvin Tomlinson will require surgery after sustaining a significant knee injury while playing on the high school soccer team.
GIANT IMPACT
Jamal Covington brings the right kind of game for No. 10 Lovejoy
From August to December, Jamal Covington fit right in on the high school football field.
MVP Camp showcases region’s top football talent
National recruiting high school football analysts Chad Simmons (FoxSports/Scout.com) and Rusty Mansell (247sports.com) are bringing their third annual MVP Camp to McDonough this Sunday, April 1, to showcase some of the state’s top talent.
PAGLIA: Well played, Chipper
The manual for how to walk away from professional sports — any professional sport — was written in 2001.
Eagle’s Landing’s Wortham given clean bill of health
Eagle’s Landing junior basketball star Eric Wortham Jr. got the news he was hoping for Thursday — he can play basketball again.
GIRLS BASKETBALL PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Britney Guy
Henry Daily Herald's Girls Basketball Player of the Year is Luella's Britney Guy
BOYS BASKETBALL PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Eric Wortham
Henry Daily Herald's Boys Basketball Player of the Year is Eagle's Landing's Eric Wortham
Coaches ready to embrace new practice rules
Fine for teams that violate rules
For his entire 35-year coaching career, Al Hughes has always conducted preseason football practice the same way.
BASEBALL ROUNDUP: Hill, Luella in command in win over Ola
The staple of Luella baseball through the season’s first 12 games — solid pitching, sound defense and a productive top of the lineup — was enough for the Lions on Monday in a 5-2 victory at Ola in a non-region game.
Lovejoy trio sells teammates on benefits of club soccer to take Lady Wildcats to the top
When Rory Welsch got the job as Lovejoy girls soccer coach four years ago, he heard a group of freshmen had been wandering the halls of the school boasting of their skills.
BASEBALL NOTEBOOK: Locust Grove ‘learning a lot’ in rebuilding year
Either Locust Grove is as bad as its 13-2 loss to Union Grove, or is as good as its 21-5 victory over Henry County.
GIRLS SOCCER NOTEBOOK: Locust Grove growing up fast
Now, in it’s third year of existence, Locust Grove High School finally has a senior class.
Drew falls to Columbia in Class AAA title game
No. 1 Columbia made it three consecutive Class AAA championships with a 65-46 victory Saturday at the Macon Coliseum, but Drew, in just its third year of existence and second of varsity basketball competition, made the Eagles work for it.
PAGLIA: Heart beats again for Eagle’s Landing basketball
If there’s a way to make a memorable run through the state tournament both irrelevant and inspirational, Eagle’s Landing has found it in teammate Eric Wortham Jr.'s frightening episode of seizures last Friday.
Eagle's Landing's Wortham out of hospital
No cause found for star forward’s seizures
Eagle’s Landing junior Eric Wortham Jr. was home from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta on Thursday after suffering a seizure at school last week, even making a surprise appearance at a team dinner.
Jonesboro has all hands on deck for 2013 run
Jonesboro boys basketball coach Dan Maehlman knows what he has on his roster.
Jonesboro suffers familiar fate against Miller Grove
Jonesboro again falls to No. 1 Miller Grove in the semifinals behind Wolverines' star center Tony Parker's 30-point performance and poor shooting from the Cardinals.
Pressure gets to Jonesboro girls in semifinals loss
Two doses of Southwest DeKalb's full-court defense and playing in the semifinals for the first time in three seasons proved too much for Jonesboro in a 51-35 loss Friday at the Arena at Gwinnett Center.
A win and ray of hope for Mundy's Mill
Mundy's Mill coach Peniel Dany crouched on the sideline near midfield as the meaningless portions of the Tigers' 26-7 win over Jonesboro on Thursday played out.
County bragging rights at stake
Both the Clayton and Henry county volleyball tournaments begin this weekend with defending champs that have held onto their title for several seasons.
Forest Park rewrites history against Jonesboro
Jonesboro's dominance over Forest Park in volleyball had been thorough. Since 2004, as far as the record books can show, the Lady Panthers had lost 12 straight matches. They had not won a single game. They were stuck in a miserable head-to-head history.
Union Grove escapes in overtime against Woodland
After Union Grove stopped Woodland an inch short of a first down in overtime, there was no sideline boundary. There was only pandemonium, only Wolverine players and coaches leaping and storming the field, only a sense that a seismic shift in the direction of their season had taken place.
Union Grove hits centerstage
Union Grove softball coach Rod Pipkin admitted a special level of excitement permeated his team leading up to tonight's game against Jones County at Georgia Tech.
Dutchtown defense delivers win
The Dutchtown defense had felt it all by the time Ola took the ball with 8:46 left in the game and a chance to tie the game. It'd felt exuberance after a goal-line stand in the first quarter, but it'd also felt exhaustion after 19 plays and 9:30 brought the Mustangs within a touchdown.
Forest Park enjoys the ride
As the Forest Park volleyball team warms up before matches, they are full of dance moves and inside jokes. In between serves during a match, they are full of quick comedic insights on plays.
Tomlinson, Henry County punish Jackson
Henry County defensive back Dalvin Tomlinson came around the right side of the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter to an unlikely sight: An unblocked quarterback.
For 22 years, no one has been a bigger fan of Henry County High School sports than Jim Daniels
The man sitting on the bus was a legend, but to Mike Rozier, he was a stranger. Maybe he was a friend of the bus driver, Rozier thought. So he gave the man nothing more than a passing glance on the way to Rozier's first game as head football coach at Henry County in 2000.
Great debut for Little and Georgia State in Ga. Dome
Sometime after the first drive, Georgia State quarterback Drew Little found the familiar rhythm of football in the midst of 30,000 raucous fans at the Georgia Dome, in the midst of walking straight into the unknown, in the midst of making history.
ELCA turns tables on Henry County
With 9:42 left in the game and a touchdown deficit, Henry County quarterback Chris Moody spun to avoid Eagle's Landing Christian linebacker Tanner Rogers, but he was trapped. By the time Moody got a look down field, Chargers linebacker Cole Carrera had him wrapped up and collapsing to the ground. It was the second consecutive sack by ELCA, it's fourth overall and a sign the Chargers had worn down Henry County's offensive line.
Time to cement identity in week two
Jonesboro second-year football coach Tim Floyd found out a great deal about his team in its opening game against Tri-Cities last week, even if it was in a 28-25 loss.
Dutchtown wears down Stockbridge in 27-14 win
There went Dutchtown running back Mycheal Brown on the first play of the game, running the Bulldogs' comfortable and effective power rush play, bouncing off defenders that had plugged his intended path and sprinting 88 yards down the left sideline for a touchdown.
Mason works his way up
Marquiste Mason had long grown comfortable to his role as the young one amongst Woodland's starting linebackers. It was that way from the start, from Woodland's first game ever. Those lined up beside him were always older and had spent far more time learning to chase down running backs.
Turning work into progress
Since Paul Burgdorf became Union Grove's football coach this past spring, he's guided the Wolverines through spring practice, summer passing leagues, strength and conditioning and fall practices.
Options aren't limited
Locust Grove football coach Clint Satterfield once had to explain his team's flexbone offense to new players and their parents. When they asked Satterfield to describe the flexbone, he would cite Army and Navy as examples of college programs that use the option-oriented rushing attack. But that didn't help.
Semi-Pro comes down to final race at AMS
William Plemons III came back to Thursday Thunder after a 10-year hiatus not for the racing exposure, not for the chase of a points championship, but for the pure enjoyment of racing 10 weeks.
Program Changer
The questions Stockbridge coach Kevin Whitley heard most often when he left Creekside to take the vacant Tigers job two years ago are the same questions he hears now.
Family connection
Growing up in Ohio, when Tyler and Bill Teknipp were in the backyard playing football against Bill's older brother and Tyler's cousin, Jim, now a tight end at Troy University, they would call one of the plays they had sketched on scraps of paper in Bill's room. Often, the play called resembled something close to an elaborate sequence of haphazard pitches and "fumbles" designed to exploit their one-man advantage, and it worked more often than it failed.
Luck finally on Plemons III's side
Since the season's opening race, William Plemons III became certain that luck had abandoned him. After marking his return to Thursday Thunder after a 10-year hiatus with a Semi-Pro victory, Plemons III finished out of the top 5 in four of the next six races. Twice he didn't finish and once he spun out.