Steve Carter/The Tifton Gazette
CNHI
TIFTON —
Cook High Hornet head football coach Ken Cofer has taken his team to the state football playoffs for three straight years, has won the Atlanta Falcons Coach of the Year award for Class AA and has posted a 26-9 mark during his three years with the Hornets.
An impressive resume, for sure, but ask Cofer about the Lamar County Trojans and you know he is excited about matching wits with Lamar head coach Franklin Stephens.
Cook will be in Barnesville tonight to face Lamar in the first round of the state Class AA football playoffs.
Stephens is 9-0-1 in his first year at Lamar after going 64-6 in his four years at Tucker. Stephens’ pedigree also includes being an assistant under Jeff Herron at Camden County.
“When you think of Lamar County, you start with Coach Stephens,” said Cofer. “He won a state championship at Tucker, and his overall accomplishments speak for themselves.”
Cofer continued, “The first word that comes to mind about Coach Stephens and his team is smooth. They do everything smoothly and efficiently.”
Lamar opened the season with a 3-3 night against Spalding, since then they have rolled off nine straight wins.
“They run the wing-T on offense, and have a base 3-5 defense,” said Cofer. “The offense is very efficient, and they fly around on defense.
“They pay attention to every detail on both sides of the ball, they rarely make mistakes.”
Cofer went on to add, “We match up size wise with them, something that has been rare for us this year, while they may have a bit more speed than we do.”
The Hornets-Trojans matchup was set up last week when Cook fell 27-22 to Early County.
“We blew several opportunties against them, and you can’t do that against a good football team like Early. You certainly can’t do that against a team the likes of Lamar County,” said Cofer.
Cook is relatively healthy going into tonight’s game.
“We had a stretch where we had four or five guys out for two to three weeks,” said Cofer. “The good thing is we had some young kids step in and do really well for us during that time.”
The Hornets-Trojans winner will face the Laney-Benedictine victor in the second round of the playoffs.
“Everyone is 0-0 now, it should be fun,” said Cofer.
