Dougherty, Americus-Sumter happy to avoid back-to-back bye weeks

If it weren’t for some mid-summer talks between a couple of first-year head coaches, the time between the first and second game of the season would have seemed like an eternity for Dougherty and Americus-Sumter.

As originally designed, the schedules for the GHSA Region 1-4A members had bye weeks slated for Weeks 2 and 3. Consecutive bye weeks are never ideal, and having those bye weeks come so soon was a situation both Dougherty head coach Damien Gary and Americus-Sumter head coach Larry Harold wanted to avoid.

Gary and Harold, as well as their respective athletics directors, worked out a solution. They moved their game, originally scheduled for Sept. 28, to this Friday at Alton Shell Stadium in Americus.

“The first thing I said when we lost that game (a 17-14, double-overtime loss Friday at Crisp County), I told my coaches, ‘I’m so glad that we were able to reschedule that game,’” Harold said. “If I had to sit through two weeks after a game like that, I probably would have went crazy.”

For both head coaches, the schedule change was a win-win, a chance to quickly work Week 1 negatives out and add to their respective teams’ body of work prior to the first break in the 12-week schedule.

“That was a blessing in disguise, us having the same schedule and being able to move that game up,” Gary said. “In both of our eyes, coming off the losses we had last week, I know we’re both eager to get back out there, fix the things we need to and get another opportunity to play a good team.”

For Dougherty, it’s a chance to quickly move past a 47-6 loss to Class 6A No. 1 Lee County in which Dougherty’s offense was held to negative yardage by one of the state’s top defensive units.

While the game turned into a one-sided contest, there were some positives for Dougherty, notably on the defensive side. A scoop-and-score gave Dougherty the game’s first points, and the Dougherty defense added three more takeaways early on.

“The defense played really well, I thought, the entire game,” Gary said. “The score wasn’t really indicative of how well I thought they played. They came out and hit them in the mouth, which is what we preach and the way we wanted to start.

“We won the toss, and we didn’t want to defer because we wanted to put the defense out there first. They definitely set the tone and really kept us in the game. They did their part.”

Americus-Sumter, meanwhile, fell just short in its bid to snap what is now a six-game losing streak against Crisp County, a streak in which five of those games have been decided by seven points or fewer.

Kierston Harvey threw for 206 yards and completed 59 percent of his passes in the Panthers’ 17-14, double-overtime loss, running for a touchdown and throwing for another.

“We have a young squad. We lost 22 seniors last year who saw a lot of playing time,” Harold said. “Our kids learned how to be competitive from those older guys. They want to continue that legacy.

“It’s encouraging that, when you watch film, the mistakes that we did make are correctable. It’s not effort. It’s not having to try to get the kids to play hard. It’s things that you can correct.”