Sep. 9—In a turn of events, the Camden County Wildcats (3-0) were able to find a new opponent, as kickoff snuck around the corner.
Last Wednesday afternoon, head coach Jeff Herron received a phone call from the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) about Camden’s scheduled opponent Beacon Hill out of Virginia.
“Someone had called the GHSA and said that they had heard that Beacon Hill was a school much like Bishop Sycamore, who had the debacle on ESPN the week before,” Herron said. “We didn’t think so, Beacon Hill didn’t think so. But the GHSA said they were going to look into it.”
The GHSA looked into the situation and found that Beacon Hill was not part of the Virginia High School Association, much like what the state of Georgia has.
Herron added that in the state of Georgia, schools must play another school that is part of a state association.
Beacon Hill wasn’t.
“We were told that Virginia has different tiers of competition,” Herron said. “They were not in the tier that we could recognize. Long story short, we started calling people in Georgia that were looking for games, trying to find somebody quickly.”
As games from all across the state had been rescheduled, canceled, or forfeited due to COVID-19, Herron recalled Inlet Grove High School out of Florida as a potential opponent to host.
“We remembered that Inlet Grove was our original opponent,” Herron said. “They had actually emailed me about a month ago after they had canceled. We had already scheduled the other game (Beacon Hill). But I called them back and they had not found anybody for the date, so they agreed to come.”
By Thursday morning, the two schools made it official and squared off at Chris Gilman Stadium.
Herron said his team didn’t need much adjustment from Beacon Hill to Inlet Grove on a day’s notice.
“It wasn’t a huge adjustment for us,” Herron said. “Probably more of an adjustment for them because they weren’t preparing for the wing-T. We had to adjust on the fly. We did swap film but we had one day to look at some film, so did they. We did have a little bit of preparing time anyway.”
That one day of preparation showed as the Wildcats throttled the Hurricanes (2-1) by way of 51 first half points. Camden would walk away from the contest with a 51-18 win. The second half saw Camden’s backups play.
“I wasn’t thrilled that we didn’t get to play in the second half,” Herron said about his starters resting. “It was my decision to not do it, but we needed to (play them) quite honestly. We have only played three quarters the entire season.”
Herron would add that he was happy that the backups had a chance to play the entire second half and showcase their talent.
The Wildcats season hasn’t been the easiest to follow along.
They have had their home opener called at the half due to lightning, a beat down on Glynn Academy, and now a change of opponents on one day’s notice. However, that hasn’t stopped Coach Herron and his team from stepping up and being a threat to win the Class 7A state title this season.
Camden heads up to No. 9 Marietta (1-1) to take on the Blue Devils at 7:30 p.m. Friday.