During a Tuesday morning meeting at its Thomaston headquarters, the Georgia High School Association ruled to push back the current football season an extra week to ensure those schools affected by Hurricane Helene have ample time to make up for their missed games.
The original final regular season Friday was Nov. 1, but now teams will get until Nov. 8 to play their missed game instead of starting the playoffs that week.
“The GHSA has decided to change the original football playoff schedule by adding a week to the regular season,” according to a statement released on ghsa.net. “The opening round of the state playoffs…will be pushed back to Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15 and 16. Therefore, the bye week originally scheduled for Nov. 29 will now be replaced by the quarterfinal round of the playoffs. The semi-finals and championship dates will not change.”
All GHSA state football championship games are still slated for Dec. 16-18 at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
The local impact
This helps out the CSRA greatly as it was one of the most heavily impacted areas in Georgia. This Friday will make two weeks in a row that games will be canceled for all schools in Richmond and Columbia counties. Others in the GHSA’s jurisdiction, such as Lincoln County (5-0) will try this week to get back to some sense of normalcy ahead of its next game — a Region 8-A D2 contest with Washington Wilkes on Oct. 11.
The GHSA stated that “schools affected by Hurricane Helene for two or more weeks may still have to double up and play a Thursday, Tuesday and Saturday sequence.”
Such scenarios, the GHSA said, will be determined by each region.
We will have more coverage with local reaction from coaches later in the week.
