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HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL: Final week of the regular season
Changing the game

• Accomplished first-year coach Ricky Woods has altered the atmosphere at Bainbridge as the Bearcats attempt to stun Thomas County Central tonight and bring the school its first Region 1-AAAA title since 1993.

Paul Dehner Jr.

BAINBRIDGE — Two days shy of the Bainbridge High School football team’s biggest game of the season — a showdown with Class AAAA No. 3 Thomas County Central tonight at 7:30 — any nervous energy remains noticeably absent.

Instead, pockets of players warm themselves with resounding, full-body laughs while others happily run through a set of new plays on this crisp November evening.

Shadows falling off the back bleachers of Centennial Field slowly dim the light on a practice facility which feels more like a party for the Bearcats.

Here, accomplished first-year coach Ricky Woods stirs the punch. And in just a few short months, his team has fallen drunk in love with its new leader.

The Bearcats have done more than transform from last year’s mediocre 5-6 team bemoaning untapped potential, to one on the brink of their first eight-win season and region title since 1993.

And they are having fun doing it.

“It’s the perfect atmosphere,” linebacker Brandon Groomes said. “I love it.”

Only, for one brief moment this past Wednesday, the party stopped. The face of excitable senior receiver Chris Bush, surrounded by suddenly silenced teammates, flushed to a serious glare when asked how much of this team’s success should be accredited to its new coach.

“All of it,” he said. “He’s a genius, a football genius.”

This was no joke. This program, one quietly tucked away in the foothills between North Florida and South Georgia — one many would describe as forgotten during its recent stretch of two winning seasons in the last 10 years — has been reincarnated under the direction of Woods.

Success is as new to Woods as the intricacies of explosive offenses that have become his signature.

Now in his 19th season as a head coach, Woods boasts a 211-42 record — not to mention fresh off four-consecutive Mississippi big-school state championships at South Panola High and a state-record 60-game win streak.

His teams finished in the top 10 of the USA Today Super 25 poll each season.

Still, when Woods arrived in Bainbridge last spring, a loaded question hung as clearly as the lonely one Region 1-AAAA championship banner at the stadium: Could he do it here?

As the Bearcats football party bellows to what will be a thundering peak tonight at Centennial Field when undefeated TCC takes the field in a battle for the No. 1 seed in the state tournament and region championship, every member of the rabid fan base will know the answer to that question.

“Before the season, we all talked about what was going to happen, we’d either go 0-10 or 10-0,” senior quarterback/linebacker Nick Williams said. “It was a big shocker because we have the same people back and now we have a great coach in Ricky Woods. He knows how to put the right people in and we just love it. We are just going along with him. Get these ‘W’s.’ ”

‘After a while you get ready for a change’

Ricky Woods was legendary in Mississippi.

South Panola wasn’t about to fall off the map – quite the opposite, in fact. The team he vacated is again undefeated, having pushed the record win steak to 70 games and ranked No. 12 nationally.

Woods could have returned to a program undefeated in 7th grade, 8^th grade, freshman and junior varsity.

He hasn’t excelled through 26 years of coaching without learning a few tricks. That includes knowing when to walk away.

“After a while, you get ready for a change,” Woods said. “Really and truly, my own perception, you been somewhere five years, you get ready for a new change. The kids do, too. You can stay too long, you know. Good, bad or different, when change happens there is a spark there.”

His need for a change turned out to be the ultimate blessing for the Bearcats. Despite heralded prospects Darryl Gamble (Georgia), Malcolm Sheppard (Arkansas) and Williams (Georgia commit) rising through the system, the Bearcats only advanced past the first round of the playoffs once in five years under previous coach Greg Guy — a second-round defeat to Troup in 2003.

“If coach Woods would have been here,” Bush said, “we’d have had some rings on our fingers”.

‘I hadn’t been used to that’

Woods, 47 years old, and quick-witted as ever through his soft southern drawl, can look at his young assistant coaches and see the type of man he used to be: Loud, active, fierce.

No more, though. According to his players Woods hasn’t displayed anger but once this season.

Even as a ball bounces out of control from a bad snap during Wednesday’s practice, settling next to Woods’ feet during a drill which saw the same play run numerous times, no reaction comes from the tenured coach.

He just glances back to the play sheet and moves on to the next one.    

“(The) older (I) get, I want them to play hard and work hard and have fun. I want them to act like gentlemen,” he said. “I was real fiery. I’ll tell you what, after a heart cauterization, they tell you to stop being so fiery. Just be happy to be alive or you’ll end up on the other side of the grass.”

What he has lost in fire, he has gained in wisdom. What the players enjoy most about Woods is his openness to their opinions.

Whether it be allowing individual uniform changes or utilizing game time suggestions, Woods defies the age gap and strikes a connecting cord with his teenage players.

“Coach Woods tells it like it is,” Bush said. “He treats you like you are grown.”

In turn, the Bearcats have grown before Woods’ eyes.

In a season that started adversely, Woods’ system has slowly taken hold.

Class AA No. 8 Early County used two late touchdown passes to pull off a remarkable 20-13 win in the season opener, then Class AAA No. 5 Cairo used a 52-yard pass at the end of regulation for a 20-19 defeat in the third week of the season.

Under its heralded new coach, the Bearcats were 1-2 and wondering where the season would lead.

But a few personnel adjustments, a wild win against Colquitt County, and a 23-22 a come-from-behind-victory against undefeated Alabama power Enterprise, 20-17, gave the Bearcats an identity. They were no longer another Bainbridge team. They were another Ricky Woods team.

“The turning point was when we beat Enterprise,” Woods said. “We gained confidence from that game. I could tell at that point, these guys felt like they could win some football games. Our team didn’t have a lot of confidence going. I hadn’t been used to that. Now they are confident we can play with them.”

‘This is our chance to earn respect’

Those two wins have grown to six in a row and have this team playing the best football it has in years.

Yet, they still hover under the radar, without one vote in the Class AAAA state poll. Perhaps that is because they were written off after the early defeats, or possibly because their biggest wins came against out-of-state teams.

No matter, with highly touted and relatively unchallenged TCC on tonight’s schedule, the opportunity to announce their arrival on the state level is here.

“We are the underdog,” Williams said. “This is our chance to earn respect.”

The Yellow Jackets have defeated opponents by a combined 350-105.

“We beat Central, we are on our way,” sophomore Bruce James said. “That’s exactly how it is. We don’t look over anybody, but we’d be on our way.”

Regardless of tonight’s outcome, this team, this program, already appears to be on its way.

What is the final destination? Well, if Woods’ history at all foreshadows the future, the Georgia Dome looms on the horizon.

But watching the effect Woods bestowed on a progressing team he calls “better than I thought they would be,” this party long ago stopped being as much about that final destination as it is about the journey.

That’s what has truly made Woods’ latest project so special. As much as he has given to Bainbridge, he has been equally moved by his new surroundings.

Peering out at his team laughing and excitedly preparing for its most daunting task of the season, even Woods couldn’t help but gush.

“This is one of my top three (teams) as far as character I have ever coached,” he said. “These are super kids. That makes it fun, too. Sometimes, those really great years, you have to battle through a lot of things you don’t want to battle through. Here, you see them, these are good kids.

“If you can’t enjoy this, you can’t enjoy football.”

Something everyone is now doing in Bainbridge.

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