Numbers have always been a major aspect of any sport.
In high school football, the digits can mean a lot of different things, as is the case with this season’s GHSA playoffs.
A dozen area schools made the Peach State’s postseason brackets across six classifications, and after a week off since the completion of the regular season, 11 of those local teams will be in action Friday night (Christian Heritage, seeded ninth among the 24 teams competing for the private school championship, has a first-round bye this week), and each has a distinct story to tell.
The following is a numerical telling of those 11 first-round stories.
12,848: Combined yards accumulated by Sonoraville’s Jaxon and Chaz Pate over the past five seasons. Jaxon, the team’s quarterback from 2021 to 2023, had 7,956 yards, while younger brother Chaz currently has 4,892 yards in two seasons in the role for head coach and father Denver Pate’s 23rd-seeded Phoenix (5-5), who travel to No. 10 Burke County (8-2) in a first-round matchup in Class AA’s 32-team bracket.