Dougherty football earns Albany’s first GHSF Daily Team of the Week award

ALBANY — Since Georgia High School Football Daily began presenting its Team of the Week award in 2020, no Albany team had earned the honor.

Until Dougherty.

The Trojans accepted the award Wednesday afternoon at Dougherty High School, turning a moment of statewide recognition into another milestone for a program that finished 2-9 just last season.

Now Dougherty is 6-1, ranked No. 7 in Class AAAA and leading Region 1-AAAA. Its latest victory — a stunning 26-23 comeback against then-No. 4 Cairo — earned an audience well beyond southwest Georgia.

Georgia High School Football Daily, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution product with more than 18,000 subscribers, selected Dougherty after reviewing games involving more than 400 high school teams across the state.

“This is the first time a team from Albany has won the ‘Team of the Week’ award,” GHSF Daily’s Jeff Gable told the Trojans.

For fourth-year head coach Uyl Joyner, the significance reached beyond rankings and recognition.

“This means everything,” Joyner said after the ceremony. “You know where we’ve come from — where we couldn’t find a win, and now here we are as the team of the week. This just means everything.”

Gable joined representatives from BSN Sports and Siemens, the award’s sponsors, for Wednesday’s presentation. He explained that selecting a winner requires more than finding an impressive final score.

“The criteria included the quality of the opponent, how you won, what the coaches have had to say, and much more,” Gable said. “You were 29-point underdogs going into this game and came from behind to win.”

Dougherty supplied a compelling case.

Trailing Cairo 16-0 at halftime, the Trojans rallied to tie the game in the third quarter and seize a 23-16 lead in the fourth. After Cairo answered, Dougherty drove into position for Christian Hernandez’s 39-yard field goal with four seconds remaining.

The Trojans outscored Cairo 26-7 after halftime, defeating one of the state’s highest-ranked teams and taking control of the region race.

Five days later, they gathered to receive an award no Albany team had claimed in the program’s history.

Joyner wanted his players to appreciate that achievement. He also wanted them looking ahead.

“We can enjoy this but we can’t stay on this,” he said. “We’ve got to get focused and ready for Bainbridge and then we’ve got to get ready for Westover. It’s a great honor but we’ve still got work to do.”

Dougherty travels to Bainbridge on Friday, then faces crosstown rival Westover before closing the regular season against Hardaway in Columbus.

Wednesday belonged to a team whose climb from 2-9 had captured the state’s attention.

Friday brings the next chance to show why.