No Matter Who Won Tonight, I’m Good

By the time you read this, somebody won.

I already knew before kickoff that I was going to be good either way.

Richmond Academy played Ware County tonight, and for me that is one of those rare football games where the scoreboard almost feels beside the point.

Richmond Academy is older than most people realize

The Academy of Richmond County has been part of Augusta since 1783 and describes itself as the oldest continually operating high school in the Southeast. George Washington delivered a commencement address there in 1791. Its old Telfair Street building even served as a hospital during the Civil War before the school eventually moved to its current campus.

That is a lot of history for one school to carry.

But that is not why I remember it.

I remember the bonfires

My mother used to teach at Richmond Academy, so I spent a lot of my childhood around that school.

And Richmond used to do pep rallies like they had something to prove.

Bonfires.

Real ones.

They would burn effigies of whoever they were playing, the cheerleaders would dance in front of the fire, everybody was yelling, and as a kid I just assumed this was what high school football was supposed to look like.

Those were the ’80s.

Nobody was calling a committee meeting.

At that age, I did not know I was running around one of the oldest schools in the South. I did not care about presidents, old buildings or institutional history.

It was just where my mother worked.

It was childhood.

Ware County is different

Ware County High belongs to another part of my life.

I graduated from there.

Y’all already know what it is.

I lived down there for half my life. Friends. Family. Friday nights. The people you thought you would know forever. The place where you start becoming old enough to decide who you are while still being young enough to have absolutely no idea.

Ware County High itself came together in 1958, later growing through the consolidation of the Waycross and county school systems. But for me the history is personal before it is institutional.

Richmond Academy takes me back to being a little boy.

Ware County takes me back to the young man that boy became.

And tonight they met

That is the part I keep coming back to.

Two schools from two counties that shaped completely different chapters of my life ended up on the same field.

The game was never about me, of course.

Those kids had their own game to play. Their own coaches. Their own homecoming memories. Their own people in the stands.

Somewhere around that field was probably a kid who will remember one completely ridiculous detail from tonight forty years from now.

Maybe a song.

Maybe a touchdown.

Maybe the way the whole place felt under the lights.

That is how these things work.

Somebody won the football game tonight.

Somebody lost.

I got both sides of my life standing across from each other for a few hours.

At my age, I think that counts as a win.

Historical background on the Academy of Richmond County was drawn from the school’s published history. Ware County High background reflects the school’s consolidation history. This piece was written for the Richmond Academy–Ware County game on October 2, 2026.