Milton Eagles Overcome Past Losses To Make Football History

By Mike Blum

MILTON, GA — The Class 7A high school football match between Milton and Colquitt County set for Dec. 12 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will feature two teams with contrasting histories.

The Colquitt Packers, which began its program in 1978, was one of the Georgia’s dominant high school teams in the 1990s, winning a state championship in 1994, reaching the finals in 1991, the semifinals in 1997 and 1998, and making the quarterfinals eight times in a nine-year-stretch from 1991 to 1999.

After winning just one playoff game the next nine years and suffering through the school’s first two losing seasons in more than three decades, the Packers returned to prominence under head coach Rush Propst, who took the job in 2008 after the school’s first losing season since 1983. Over the past 10 seasons, Propst’s Colquitt teams won state titles in 2014 and 2015, reached championship games in 2010, 2017 and 2018.

Milton began its program in 1950 and enjoyed immediate success under coach Gus Letchas, going 7-3 in its second season in 1951 and 10-0 in the regular season the next year, winning a region championship for the first time. But after four more winning records over the next four seasons, the Eagles would enjoy only a handful of winning seasons over the next two decades.

When former NFL player Jim Burson took over as head coach in 1974, the Eagles had finished with just three winning records over the previous 17 years, with no Milton team in that stretch winning more than six games. Under Burson, the Eagles went 51-37-2 during his first nine seasons, including a 9-1 mark in 1980. But after back-to-back 5-5 seasons the next two years, the Milton program bottomed out later in the 1980s, enduring a 37-game losing streak that including three consecutive 0-10 seasons.

The losing streak eventually led to Burson losing his job. An outgoing principal replaced Burson with an individual who had gone 1-9 in his only season as a head coach, and the result was a third straight 0-10 season for the Eagles, who again were rarely competitive.

Fortunately for the Milton football program, the consolidation of high schools in south Fulton County left several head coaches without jobs for the 1987 season, and the Eagles were able to hire one of them to repair the damage caused by Burson’s one-year replacement.

Peter Paul, who served as head coach for five years at Feldwood, inherited a program that lost 34 consecutive games, and the streak would reach 37 before the team scored its first win under their new head coach. Milton won three games that season and four in 1988 before producing the school’s first winning season in almost a decade in 1989.

Paul went 56-44 in the regular season during his first 10 years as Milton’s head coach, with the Eagles going 8-2 in both 1992 and 1993. Paul coached Milton into the playoffs four times in a five-year span, but after going 1-9 in 1997, he was removed as head coach despite the work he had done to restore the football program to respectability. Milton made a series of coach changes over the next several years, with none of the head coaches lasting more than six years.

The team in 2011 brought on Howie DeCristofaro from Florida. DeCristofaro put together some talented teams, with the Eagles going 24-6 in the regular season between 2012 and 2014. Milton sent a number of players to Division 1 schools during that period, including 2012 seniors Carl Lawson, a defensive end, and running back Peyton Barber, who both went on to star at Auburn and are currently playing in the NFL.

The 2013 Milton team went out in the first round of the playoffs after an 8-2 record with a largely new cast of players, several of whom led the Eagles to what became the most successful season in school history in 2014, including the program’s first ever state playoff wins. Milton went 9-1 during the regular season and captured a region championship, but a last-second loss to rival Roswell cost the Eagles a 10-0 record.

The 2014 Milton team featured first team all-state offensive lineman Nick Wilson, who went on to play at Stanford, linebacker Quarte Sapp and wide receiver/defensive back Obe Fortune. Following seasons of 4-6 and 5-5, DeCristofaro stepped down and was replaced by Adam Clack, the head coach the previous three seasons at region opponent West Forsyth.

The Eagles went 8-2 in Clack’s first season and defeated Collins Hill 44-15 in the first round of the state playoff before losing 28-23 to Brookwood, which reached the semifinals before losing to Colquitt.

Milton again went 8-2 this season, losing twice by two points to region champions Roswell and
Parkview. The Eagles easily swept their five region opponents from Forsyth to win their second region title in five years, and have won four straight playoff games to become the first Milton team to win 12 games in a season.

The Eagles will have a chance to avenge the 2014 playoff loss to the Packers, but will have to beat a
team that is 14-0, ranked No. 1 in the state and has appeared in national polls rating the country’s top high school football teams.

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