Published: December 24, 2008 03:05 pm            

Champions and changes

Year in review: Success, turnover defined area athletic in 2008

“Time is change; we measure its passing by how much things alter.” — Nadine Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World.



Take a look in the mirror this morning and you probably won’t notice much different from yesterday. Compare yourself to a picture from last Christmas — depending on your consumption of cookies leading up to this holiday — and you might notice a little more. But pull out your wedding day photos, high school yearbook or kindergarten picture and you’ll surely have to wonder who that kid is.

Time changes us all, physically and otherwise, no matter what we may do to fight it, though the day-to-day observation doesn’t always reveal those tiny turns of the gears of the years gone by.

But a look back at this year in local sports, nearly finished, should be enough to convince one that change is a constant. Championships — and the area had its share of those this season — are always defining moments for any year in sports, but changes shouldn’t be brushed off simply because, well, they happen every year.

Change, particularly in the form of turnover, seemed to be a strong theme this year for the area’s athletic scene, from new coaches to new players who helped shake up their team’s fortunes.

With that in mind, The Daily Citizen’s sports staff invites you to look back at 10 of the biggest stories — in no particular order — in area sports for 2008:



Quick change

The lessons of the power of change came early in the calendar this year. Northwest Whitfield’s girls basketball team is year in and year out one of the most consistent in the area, but the Lady Bruins struggled to start the 2007-08 season as they faced a competitive schedule and struggled to adjust to new faces on the varsity roster.

They were 5-8 by the end of December, but that didn’t last — the Lady Bruins finished the regular season without another loss, earned the No. 1 seed for the Region 7-4A tournament and advanced to the championship game before losing to Rome. However, they recovered from that loss quickly enough to become the only area basketball team to win a state playoff game this season and gave themselves and coach Margaret Stockburger a lesson about dealing with change.

While the turnaround started with a two-point win at home against Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe on Jan. 8, it was a last-second victory by the same margin at rival Dalton a few days later that showed them the importance of adjustment. That was the first game 6-foot-3-inch sophomore Christy Robinson and 6-5 freshman Quaneisha McCurty started together, and their effectiveness that night showed that Stockburger and the Lady Bruins, generally a guard-heavy squad, could change their game plan when needed.



Immediate change

After the two-decade tenure of Manny Pontonio ended, Dalton High baseball’s next coach, Teddy Craig, was in town just three seasons before moving on. Dalton High athletic director Ronnie McClurg hoped to have another longtime coach in charge when he hired Jed Douglas in June 2007, telling The Daily Citizen the coach — who came from Florida — talked to the Dalton AD “like he’d like to coach here for 30 years. I hope he’s that good.”

Apparently, he wasn’t — at least off the playing field, because he never made it to his first game with the Catamounts.

McClurg was mum about his reasons for firing Douglas outside of saying that “the baseball program wasn’t going in the direction we needed it to be going,” but a source within the program admitted the AD had already warned the new coach about his actions, which the source said included offseason practices in violation of GHSA regulations.

Still, the Cats showed they could deal with change. The firing came just a week before the start of the 2008 season, but Bobby Brotherton — already the school’s softball coach — took over and helped lead the team to the Class 4A state playoffs and a victory in the first round before the season ended.



Change again

Turnover in the coaching ranks hasn’t been uncommon at Southeast High, but athletic director Scott Ramsey was dealt a double blow late this past winter when, within a few weeks of each other, football coach Jon Lovingood and boys basketball coach Tim Rogers both resigned after two seasons in charge of their programs.

Neither was in good shape despite the efforts of Lovingood and Rogers, but new blood was introduced as David Crane came from South Carolina for his first head coaching job and Joey Bryson — a former Raiders assistant, in fact — came back to Southeast after leading Model for a season.

Change was easy to notice on the football field almost immediately, at least in approach, as the Raiders’ pass-happy spread stood in sharp contrast to Lovingood’s run-based scheme. Bryson is also working to help his players adjust to changes, optimistic that the second half of this season will show coach and players figuring it out together.



Rare turnover

One of the strengths Dalton football fans almost always point to when asked about what has helped them keep their streak of winning seasons going so long is the stability within the coaching ranks as both those in charge and their assistants have stuck around for years, if not decades.

That was the case with McClurg, a longtime football assistant before a short retirement was ended when he became the program’s head coach in 2001. But McClurg decided to hang up his coaching whistle in the offseason, keeping his job as AD but handing the football reins to offensive coordinator Adam Winegarden, who took over immediately when McClurg stepped down on March 23.

Winegarden called the promotion an honor and said he looked forward to keeping up the tradition of the past. His first season didn’t disappoint those looking for the streak to survive — he helped the Cats push it to 49.



Outrageous run

Southeast sports fans were given reason to celebrate this season by a program that has been one of the school’s best in recent years when the boys soccer team piled up the milestones.

Included were a perfect run through Region 7-4A to the league title — the high point of which was no doubt a victory, via shootout, against rival Dalton for the first time this decade — and four straight victories at home in the Class 4A state playoffs as the Raiders became the school’s first athletic team to reach a state title game. The final match ended less pleasantly than planned, with the Raiders this time going down via shootout to Lakeside-DeKalb, but their creation of memories had already made the season a memorable one.



High there

Run faster, go farther, jump higher — they’re the simple athletic goals children set, but the basic building blocks for track and field, where the sporting tests are raw and real.

Nate Woodason made his last athletic feat as a high school senior at Northwest a memorable one this spring when he won the Class 4A state boys pole vault title via a meet record effort of 14 feet, 9 3/4 inches.

It wasn’t his personal best — a vault of 15 feet at the Region 7-4A meet broke the school mark his older brother Ben had set five years before — but showed his penchant for showing up big at the right time. Woodason, also a standout football player, had also finished second at state as a junior and won another title when he was a sophomore.



Trending up

The athletic program at Christian Heritage has been one of frequent change by design as the Lions and Lady Lions work their way toward what they hope is a future of Georgia High School Association competition.

In 2007-08, the change was a deliberate one as the school traded competition in the Tennessee Association of Christian Schools for a place in the Georgia Independent Schools Association. They more than survived the transition as the school’s volleyball, boys basketball, girls basketball, baseball and boys soccer teams all made the playoffs in their first GISA seasons. The Lady Lions went furthest on the basketball court, making the Class 2A title game, but the Lions also made the semifinals in boys basketball and soccer.

In football, one sport where they didn’t change, the new thing was a shiny trophy celebrating the Lions’ victory in the Georgia Football League championship — just five years after the school first took the gridiron with a middle school squad.



Change of scenery

The change Mitchell Boggs got in June was one every professional baseball player — not to mention plenty of kids — hopes for. His callup from the Cardinals’ Class Triple-A affiliate in Memphis to the big club in St. Louis came in early June and Boggs was delighted to meet a goal he’d set before the season began with his invite to spring training.

Boggs went on to win his first start in the bigs a few days later, topping the Cincinnati Reds. He was sent down to Memphis in early July before rejoining St. Louis later that month, but ultimately finished the season in Triple-A.



Surprising change

For Roger Crossen, the change that came in July was neither expected nor pleasant.

The Whitfield County Recreation Department director resigned under pressure after meeting with Whitfield County administrator Robert McLeod, ending a tenure of leadership that lasted 17 years and followed six previous years of work with the department — a sum almost as long as the WCRD has been in existence.

At the time, Crossen said he was given little explanation on why he was being forced out and that he’d never been reprimanded while in charge of the department. County officials did little to broaden the non-explanation, though an open records request for Crossen’s personnel file revealed McLeod’s disappointment in several management areas by Crossen, including caretaking at some of the department’s parks.



Out of reach

As evidence that each new year brings its own surprises, the 2008 football season offered its own. While there were certainly some unknowns this year as Southeast dropped down to Region 6-3A as part of GHSA reclassification and Dalton, Murray County and Northwest competed in one of the state’s largest leagues in the revamped Region 7-4A, it still seemed a safe prediction that someone from the area would be around for the playoffs.

After all, that had been the rule from 2004-07, when two teams made the playoffs the last three of those years, and while Dalton and Northwest had lost some big playmakers from high-achieving ‘07 squads — Dalton won the 7-4A title, Northwest won a first-round playoff game on the road — they had overall program stability that some of the region’s schools didn’t.

It looked good enough early, with the two combining for a 11-1 record to start the schedule, but Dalton was dismantled in a 38-14 loss at Sequoyah during the seventh week of the season and Northwest dropped back-to-back home games against Rome and Sequoyah.

Dalton also lost at Rome during that stretch, setting up a must-win meeting with Northwest in the season’s final week before the Region 7-4A playoffs; the Cats won it handily, but came up short next week at Hillgrove and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2004.

        

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