Peachtree Ridge Caps Regular Season with Romp over Berkmar

SUWANEE — Peachtree Ridge, with a blink-and-you-miss-it, lightning-paced offense, made swift work of Berkmar on Friday night, finishing the Lions' regular season with a 39-7 victory in the Region 7-AAAAAA football matchup.

State playoff-bound Peachtree Ridge rolled in the first half, scoring a touchdown on every drive, while Berkmar failed to match the pace and scoring output. When the Patriots found forms of success, the Lions snuffed it out, and when the Lions seemed dead to rights on offense, they extended drives and plays. 

“If the [Peachtree Ridge] players believe in the team, we can play as long as we want,” said Lions head coach Matt Helmerich. “We've got the talent, we've got the coaching, and we have a really good group of kids. When we line up, play hard and do what we are supposed to do, we are pretty darn good.” 

On the first Lions drive of the game, quarterback Darnell Kelly read the defense and kept the ball on the option, storming into the end zone from 8 yards out. On the next drive, Kelly’s play found points again, when he lofted a pass to Julian Kendrick on a wide-open go route connecting for a 30-yard touchdown. To cap the first quarter off, with a minute left to go, Braxton Palmer caught a pass on 2nd and goal to extend the lead to 21-0. 

Peachtree Ridge continued to roll in the second quarter. On third down, Kelly perfectly timed a pass to the tight end, who utilized blocking to breeze to the end zone from 28 yards away. Peachtree Ridge’s final drive of the first half encompassed its dominance, when they went 48 yards in a minute, capitalized by a 5-yard receiving touchdown that marked the first-half score 33-0.

In the second quarter, Berkmar’s offense looked far more promising, mainly through feeding their pair of running backs for multiple chain-moving runs. The closest they came to points in the first half was when they reached the 5-yard line with 15 seconds to go, but due to misunderstanding and poor clock management, the Patriots failed to run another play and left empty-handed heading into the locker room.

The second half was more of the same. While Berkmar’s offense continued to look more hopeful each drive, the running clock and rolling Lions proved to be far too overbearing. Peachtree Ridge opened the half with a 40-yard passing touchdown from the Lions’ second unit. Berkmar answered by grinding down the field using its run game, where the Patriots scored their only points of the night with a Thomas Morris III 3-yard punch in to reach the final score 39-7.

The Patriots only touched the ball one other time in the second half due to the running clock, where time expired in Berkmar’s final game of the season. 

Heading into the playoffs against North Atlanta on November 15, Helmerich shared his perspective on the upcoming task.

“Penalties have been a concern off and on throughout the season, and missing PATs has been a concern all year,” Helmerich noted as aspects that need to be refined, “Those are little things that we have to clean up if we want to play through Thanksgiving and into December.

“Next week is not a week off. We have to get better. It gives us an extra week to prepare for North Atlanta. We have to use a couple of days to fix the sloppy stuff that we can get better at. We are going to focus on us the first days of the week, then focus on North Atlanta at the end of the week. 

“The point of emphasis will be ‘finish’. We lost three games where we had the lead in the fourth quarter. We know we can do it, but we have to finish the game.”