Griffin High's Moses Mayes (gold shoes) goes up to make a catch over the middle against 2011 state finalists Lovejoy during a summer passing league camp game last month at Griffin High. (John Sullivan/Daily News)
An unidentified Griffin High player tries to catch up to a pass during a passing league camp game last month at Griffin High. (John Sullivan/Daily News)
“We played great early in pool play,” said 12th-year Bears head coach Steve DeVoursney, whose team was by far in the toughest of the four pools in the two-day camp which opened on Saturday.
Griffin’s pool — which produced four quarterfinalists and three of the four semifinalists — had teams from Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.
Griffin, which had been running two teams throughout its summer passing league camp schedule, only took its top team to this camp. And the team more than held its own.
“We played some of the top teams and beat two of them and tied one of them,” DeVoursney said of his team’s record against the three semifinalists in their pool. “We would have won won our pool but we lost to a team that had only one win all day.”
It caps a summer where both Griffin passing league teams — one led by starter Jaquez Parks and the other led by backup Anforne’ Stroud — combined to play 59 games, finishing runner-up in two tournaments. The summer also saw Griffin host a 10-team passing league camp, the school’s first such camp in recent memory.
DeVoursney and his staff are hoping to use its success as a gateway to attract more teams to a larger camp next summer.
“We might be hosting one next summer with Under Armour,” added DeVoursney.
Griffin, which travels to take on Newnan in a preseason scrimmage Aug. 17, moves from Region 3-AAAAA Div. A to Region 4-AAAA Div. B this season along with the likes of: crosstown rival Spalding, archrival Upson-Lee, North Clayton, Riverdale and Jonesboro.
The season opener is Aug. 31 at Dutchtown. Other non-subregion games for the Bears come against Northgate, Woodland-Stockbridge and Stockbridge.
Griffin has been to the state playoffs a school-record 11 consecutive seasons — all under DeVoursney — and 15 times in 16 years. The Bears, which finished 9-3 in 2011, are also looking to extend their school-record run of two or more wins in the state playoffs to five consecutive seasons in 2012.
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