With championship on the line, No. 8 Northeast hosts No. 12 Fitzgerald in semifinals

When No. 8 Northeast hosts No. 12 Fitzgerald with a trip to the GHSA A-Division I state championship on the line Friday night, it will likely be the coldest football game hosted by a Bibb County School District team in a long while.

Temperatures should be in the 30s come kickoff time at Thompson Stadium in east Macon on Friday, and this is after the Raiders played their quarterfinal game up in Blue Ridge last week. They can’t escape the frigid weather.

That’s largely because a Bibb County school hasn’t hosted a semifinal game since 1975, when Central went on to win the state title. Westside made the semifinals in the early 2000s, but the next-to-last round was hosted in the Georgia Dome at the time.

Northeast (11-2) is in the middle of a historic playoff run, as far as Bibb public schools are concerned.

“It’s been a while, that’s for sure,” Raiders head coach Jeremy Wiggins said about a BCSD school hosting a penultimate playoff game. “It feels good to be in this situation. Just want to take it one game at a time and play it real normal.”

“Normal” has meant dominance for the Raiders this year, at least by many schools’ standards. Northeast is in the midst of its best season ever, already setting a program record with 11 wins and reaching the semifinals for the first time.

Much of that success comes from star running back Nick Woodford, who reached the 2,000-yard plateau this season — the second time he’s done so in his career after amassing more than 2,700 yards as a sophomore two years ago — thanks to an incredible 374-yard rushing performance in the quarterfinals against Fannin County, the classification’s No. 1-seed.

“We’re definitely blessed to have him. You get one of these players about every five years that just is a real standout,” Wiggins said of his backfield threat. “He can really run the ball. He went to work in that second half.”

Woodford broke off multiple long scoring runs in the third and fourth quarters of Northeast’s 48-39 win over the Rebels, helping the Raiders pull away late despite their early 14-0 deficit at the end of the first quarter.

“In the first half we made some mistakes. We gave them an interception, we gave them a fumble, we gave them some three-and-outs,” Wiggins said. “Then we came out and scored after halftime, and everything just kinda clicked. That’s when we started scoring… after that, we just were trying to outscore them and get a couple stops.”

It was a barnburner in the second half, with the Raiders scoring 33 points after the break. The Rebels held a 31-28 lead entering the fourth, but Northeast struck for 20 points in the final period.

“Just staying composed, telling the boys we were still in that game and just had to hold them,” Wiggins said of his message to the team at halftime. “We really just got back to what we do, we had a whole lot better half in the second.”

Now Northeast will have to contend with Fitzgerald (10-3). The Purple Hurricane have been one of the strongest football teams in Macon recently. This season marks their fifth consecutive trip to the semifinals, and they made the state championship game three years in a row from 2020 to 2022.

There should be plenty of handoffs to running backs in this game. Fitzgerald quarterback Victor Copeland somehow bested Woodford’s semifinal performance, rushing for 417 yards in his team’s win against No. 4 Worth County on the road. The Purple Hurricane trailed 38-21 late in the fourth quarter but scored the last 21 points of the game to get a comeback win, their second victory over Worth County this season.

“They’re a top program in Georgia, constantly in the championship, constantly in the playoffs,” Wiggins said. “We’ve played them recently, so we’re familiar with their coaching staff and the way they play.”

The teams last met in the regular season last year, when Fitzgerald came away with a 28-20 win at the beginning of the season. The Raiders lost to the Purple Hurricane by one point, 28-27, in 2022. Fitzgerald went on to win the title game that year.

The two running backs and their teams are set to clash at 7:30 p.m. at Thompson Stadium on Friday night.