Week three for most football teams is just another week in the middle of a long season. For Gray Collegiate Academy, though, players and coaches are preparing for the possibility that it will be the last time they take the field before the playoffs.

With one game left before Gray begins its Region IV-2A play, the team is searching for potential replacement opponents in case its regional foes decide to not play them.

“We can’t control that. If teams don’t wanna play us, so be it,” Gray head coach Adam Holmes said. “Our guys work hard, they work extremely daggum hard, and for them, for this, to be taken away from us, by guys in our own region, it’s really ridiculous to me.”

Holmes has started looking for new opponents, and confirmed he has been in communication with a few potential schools, but nothing has been set in stone.

“We’ve got to sign the contract stuff for that, but I’ve already talked with two teams,” Holmes said. “One out of Georgia, one here in South Carolina.”

The uncertain future has affected the team, especially veteran players who are playing in a War Eagle uniform for the last time. They don’t care who they play, but they want to play.

“It hurts because I’m a senior, and I don’t know when I’m going to really play,” receiver Jamarious Lockett said. “It just hurt me, but whenever we play, we’re going to play.”

The team could go around two months with no games if all of the region games are canceled and no replacement games become official.

“It’ll be crazy, man,” receiver Zai Offord said. “I ain’t gonna lie. I don’t know what I’d do. I’d probably cry for days man. I don’t know.”

The situation started this past spring when schools in Gray’s region chose to forfeit certain games against the team due to what they felt were unfair competitive advantages.

Prior to the start of the football season, the South Carolina High School League Executive Committee ruled that it would not enforce fines for teams that forfeited region contests against Gray.

Gray’s appeal to overturn that decision was denied in August.

“Teams in our region don’t want to play us and give us a region title and make it an easy run for a state championship, so be it,” Holmes said. “They’re going to try and take that away from us. It’s not going to hinder us. It’s not gonna stop us. If we don’t play, if we take six weeks off, then daggum, we’ll take six weeks off, and we’ll go fresher for playoffs.”

The War Eagles are 3-0 this season, after impressive offensive performances in wins against Christ Church, Crestwood and Hammond, averaging 54 points per contest.

This week’s game against Camden is the last before the War Eagles are supposed to face regional foe against Mid-Carolina on the road Sept. 22.
“Honestly, as a senior it hurts of course,” Offord said. “But like, we don’t really get into none of that. Like, it doesn’t matter. If they play us, they play us. If they don’t, they don’t.”

Gray has not let this situation hinder the team in practice or stop them from preparing like they will play every week.

“If they don’t [play us], it’s cool. We’re going to work for next week,” Offord said. “We won’t get it in our head, so we won’t get lost on the side.”

The team knows there is a path to playing a complete season, even if its region opponents forfeit. Holmes has been in communication with more than just the two teams they are close to a deal with.

“I’ve got some other things lined up as well,” Holmes said. “So we’ll find games.”

No matter the opponent, place or date, players like Lockett want to play games, prepare for the playoffs and attempt to capture its seventh state title.
“We gotta keep grinding,” Lockett said. “TBD, that’s what we’re going by. Regain our title, we’re just going off that.”