MAYES: Consecutive streak of local soccer state championships comes to an end

May 7—It couldn't last forever.

Sure, at times, the streak seemed like it could go on indefinitely.

After every high school soccer season since 2017, a team from a school Whitfield County has celebrated a state championship.

At least one per year. Sometimes multiple. There were three local state champions from the county in 2023 and 2021, and there were two in 2022.

But that streak finally saw its end Friday, with the county's two last-standing boys soccer teams in the 2024 season, Christian Heritage School and Northwest Whitfield, falling in the state semifinals. For the first time since 2016, a Whitfield County team won't be bringing home a soccer state championship trophy from the state championship games.

Well, other than in 2020. The end of the 2020 season was canceled after the COVID-19 outbreak, so no state championships were awarded that year. Though, a few local teams were in positions to compete for titles if they had been held.

It's the end of an incredible streak on the surface that only gets more impressive when you dig into the details.

First, the streak, which spanned six seasons across seven years, wasn't accomplished by the same teams stringing together state championships every season.

Multiple teams did win multiple titles during the streak — Dalton and Southeast Whitfield won three, while Coahulla Creek won two — but the streak was, literally, a whole-county effort.

There are six high schools within the county that field a boys soccer team that plays in the Georgia High School Association.

All six won a state title within the last six seasons.

That includes The Dalton Academy, which only came into existence for the first time during the 2022 season. In their first season, the Pumas won a state title.

That also includes Christian Heritage, which won its first GHSA state title last year, completing the Whitfield County collection of state champions.

Southeast won in 2017 to kick off this streak, becoming the first county team outside of Dalton High to win a state title. Northwest joined as a state champion in 2018, and Dalton won again in 2019.

After the COVID-enforced break in 2020, the recent local run of success really heated up. Multiple county teams won state titles after 2021, 2022 and 2023. Dalton and Southeast added championships in 2021, and Coahulla Creek won their first that year too. It was Southeast and Dalton Academy in 2022, and Dalton, Coahulla and Christian Heritage last year.

The streak of local state championships also gets more impressive when looking at what preceded it.

The 2016 season wasn't simply the final year before local state championships started rolling in. It was also a blip in a more lengthy stretch of soccer successes.

Dalton High won state championships three years in a row from 2013 to 2015. Those were the second, third and fourth titles for a program that now has seven.

So, when looking at the extended run of high school state championships, from 2013 to 2023, at least one boys soccer program won a state championship in all but one season in which state championships were available.

That's nine out of 10 seasons, not counting 2020, and 14 total state championships from the six county programs in those 10 seasons.

The 2017-2023 streak ends with a season in which the local high school soccer scene still showed a great measure of success, to be sure. Two teams reached the state semifinals and four were in the Elite 8. Six county teams, across boys and girls programs, won region championships in 2024.

The soccer scene is still strong in Soccertown. It just didn't produce any high school state championships this time.

Daniel Mayes is the sports editor at the Dalton Daily Citizen. Write to him at danielmayes@dailycitizen.news