Big news is bad news for Northeast: star running back Woodford done for the season with ACL injury

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Good news is worth sharing. Bad news, not so much.

          And Northeast has been pretty quiet about some very, very bad news.

          Head coach Jeremy Wiggins confirmed Monday morning that star running back Nick Woodford is done for the season after tearing his ACL in the first half of the Raiders’ 57-0 win on Sept. 29 against Central.

          “I saw the play where he fell down awkward and didn’t get back up,” Wiggins said. “It was just one of those plays.”

          Woodford’s junior season ends with 951 yards on 95 carries and 11 touchdowns.

          “It sucks for him, because he’s such a good kid, and he works so hard,” Wiggins said. “You hate when it happens to people like that.”

          Woodford, a junior, has around a 3.5 GPA. He has 3,679 yards and 51 touchdowns in two seasons. His 2,768 yards last year ranks 14th all-time in the state, according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.

          He passed Westside’s Travis Evans for Bibb County’s single-season mark. Evans ran for 2,423 yards in 2004. Evans is the county record-holder with 6,279 career yards, 24th in the state.

          That mark would have been in jeopardy with a healthy Woodford, who averaged 204 yards a game in 18 games.

          At 175 yards a game for 36 games – three 12-game seasons – Woodford would have had 6,300 yards.

          His workload had decreased this season to keep him healthy and fresh down the stretch and in the playoffs.

          “That was the plan,” Wiggins said. “We had already talked about it, that he wasn’t going to play as much.”

          He would have been done by halftime of the Central game had he not gotten hurt.

          Woodford had surgery last week by Dr. Daniel Grahl at OrthoAtlanta and is already in rehab mode. Recovery time for a partial ACL tear is about three months, and a minimum of six months for a full tear. Barring setbacks, Woodford should be at 100 percent by the time preseason camp starts in July.

          Northeast handily finished off Central and then beat Kendrick 42-6 a week later, as expected, but lost 35-34 in overtime last Friday to Spencer.

Video: Michael A. Lough/Central Georgia Sports Report

          The loss put a major blow into Northeast’s hopes for a historical reason. His absence wasn’t necessarily the reason Northeast’s Region 2-AA title hopes - the Raiders were looking to be the first Bibb County public school to win a region title outright since 2012 - evaporated with the loss.

          With so much time to prepare for life without Woodford, the Raiders marched out to leads of 25-0 and 28-7 (at halftime) on the legs of quarterback Reginald Glover, who had more than 130 yards on two first-quarter touchdown runs, as well as a pick-6 from Jayden Pruett.

          But they were outscored 21-0 in the second half, and blanked until scoring in overtime, losing because of a missed point-after kick.

          Moving into the starting back role is sophomore Christyn Clark, who at 5-7, 165 pounds is the opposite of Woodford, who goes 5-10, 220 pounds. Clark saw a fair amount of action before Woodford went down, but his stats on MaxPreps haven’t been updated.

          Northeast, 6-2 overall and 4-1 in region play, hosts Jordan at Thompson on Friday and finishes the regular season against Rutland.