Mill Creek head coach Shannon Jarvis was less than thrilled following his team’s 31-10 win at Archer. Which might seem strange considering the two teams met in the state quarterfinals a year ago and the Hawks won by 21 points.
Yet the game was far from a clean one for the undefeated Hawks, who struggled to find rhythm on offense and turned the ball over three times.
Fortunately for Mill Creek, it has a championship level defense so the game was never really in doubt. Jarvis praised his defense and kicker — Brenton King, who hit a school-record, 56-yard field goal in the first half — and said his offense showed at times what it’s capable of.
The reason for Jarvis’ displeasure wasn’t because he was looking for style points or because he’s a perfectionist. He just knows what’s looming in the coming weeks — region play.
“We’ve got a great time to have our off week …” he said. “I’m a little concerned that we’re not getting the progress that we need. We’ve got to do it now. We go into region play and we’ve got to focus on Mill Creek right now. The fumbles, the interceptions, we counted on the sideline and we had eight plays in a row with missed assignments. We will not win at all with that. So we’ve got to get that fixed.”
Mill Creek is off this week but opens region play Sept. 16 at Collins Hill. This week will be the final week of non-region contests for the majority of Gwinnett teams before region play begins.
There will be no do-overs and no more learning experiences, as the games now count towards playoff spots. The new regions will bring about some interesting matchups, including Norcross in Region 7-AAAAAAA with Brookwood, Parkview and Central Gwinnett. Region 6 is mostly unchanged and Region 8 adds Newton and Rockdale to the mix with Archer, Grayson, Shiloh and South Gwinnett.
The realignment also gave Lanier a county partner in Dacula in AAAAAA. Buford and GAC are without Gwinnett teams in their AAAAA and AAA regions, respectively, while Wesleyan will face an almost entirely new set of foes in it’s Class A region.
