Gainesville could not finish its Cinderella run during the high school football playoffs in Georgia. The Red Elephants came up short in the state championship game after a month of chaos.
Their head coach ultimately dressed for his own funeral.
Josh Niblett’s haters were thrilled to see him lose but the disappointing result put an end to one of the best stories in high school football this season. It was a great effort.
Gainesville was cast as the high school football villain in Georgia.
Gainesville High School enrolls approximately 2,400 students in Grades 9-12. It serves the town of Gainesville, Georgia, about 40 miles northeast of Athens.
The Red Elephants earned the No. 4-seed in the Class 5A high school football playoff bracket to secure home-field advantage through the first three rounds. Unfortunately, their dominant win in the second round was spoiled by an ugly bench-clearing brawl that forced the officials to call an early end to the game during the third quarter. Right or wrong, they were cast as the villains from that point forward.
The Georgia High School Association suspended 39 players on the Gainesville roster for its next game. Even though that number was later reduced to 35, that obviously still put the Red Elephants at a huge disadvantage for the third round of the playoffs.
The school filed for an injunction in response to the ruling, which led to a messy legal battle over the Thanksgiving holiday. Class 5A games were even pushed back a week while things played out in court.
In the end, the GHSA caved to Gainesville and reinstated all of its players. The Red Elephants won each of their next four games to reach the state championship even though they were the underdogs.
Josh Niblett dressed in all black for the state championship.
Head coach Josh Niblett is very proud of his players for how they responded to the unusual circumstances over the last few weeks. They kept fighting. They kept winning.
However, the Cinderella run came to an end on Wednesday night with a blowout loss to Thomas County Central in the Class 6A state title game.
Niblett arrived to the game dressed in all black. Even if it was not his intention to dress as the villain, everybody knows the bad guy in Western films always wears a black cowboy hat. When asked if he was headed to a funeral upon arrival to the game, Niblett tipped his hat and kept walking.
Unfortunately, the funeral was his own. Gainesville lost.
Niblett’s haters loved to see him lose after wearing all black in pregame. You just know the GHSA was secretly rooting against him because of the brawl.
Fair enough, but nobody expected him to be there in the first place. Nobody thought the Red Elephants would make it this far. They should still be proud of a successful season!