Bryan County High School will put its unbeaten record on the line when the Redskins play host to Metter on Friday night for Homecoming.

And if you never thought the word "unbeaten" would be used in a sentence about the BCHS football team at the halfway point of the season, you probably aren't alone.

This, after all, is a program that went 0-10 in 2010 under first-year coach Mark Wilson. It's a program that historically has struggled to get wins -- the Redskins are 95-257-3, according to the Georgia High School Historians Association -- and Bryan County has had only two winning seasons since 1976.

But here the Redskins are, a win away from the program's first winning season since 1993 when Alan Lane's team went 8-3. Even if Bryan County doesn't win another game, the team has already put together its best record since 1992, when Lane's Redskins went 5-5.

The success is naturally creating a stir in North Bryan and Pembroke, where Redskins fever is rising.

"People are fired up. It's been a pleasant surprise, really," Wilson said. "We've seen a lot of school spirit and a lot of things like that that have gone on along with winning. It‘s been a lot of fun to be a part of."
Wilson, whose reputation for turning programs around in his second season on the job won't suffer a bit from 2011, acknowledged even he's been somewhat surprised by the Redskins perfect first half of the season.

"We felt pretty positive we were going to be better," he said, noting the team‘s young players got plenty of on field experience last year and a year in the weight room. "I don't know if anybody expected us to be 5-0."

Not everyone is buying into the hype. The Redskins are one of a dozen unranked and unbeaten teams, according to the Georgia High School Football Daily Report, a site run by veteran Atlanta and Athens are sportswriters.

They project the Redskins will finisih 1-4 against a slate that includes Metter, Calvary Day, Claxton, Savannah Christian, currently ranked No. 1 in all of Class A, and then the region play-in game.

Wilson knows there are doubters out there. 

"We're just going to play who we've got to play and do what we've got to do, that's the main thing," he said.

So far, the Redskins have done what they've had to do in a variety of ways. The offense has played well at times, the defense at other times and special teams have also chipped in.

But the team's perfect record to date doesn't mean the team has played perfectly. Few high school teams do, let alone one that that plays only three seniors and includes sophomores and freshmen in many key positions.

Most recently, the Redskins had to find a way to pull out their most recent win, a 19-10 victory over Savannah Country Day.

"You've got to learn how to win," Wilson said. "When people start patting you on the back, you can start thinking you don't have to do what it was that got you to this point. Not that they didn't do what we told them to do, but they just weren't putting as much effort into it during practice. After (the last game) they're putting more effort into it again."

Losing, after all, is a great teacher for those determined not to lose. And if you go by a practice in Pembroke anytime this fall, you're likely to hear Wilson telling his players he's not about to let them take a step back.

"One thing you learn when you're losing is how not to do things," Wilson said. "I think we learned last year that if we do these things we're going to lose. Now, we're seeing that if we do these other things, we're going to win. We try to remind them of that. We'll tell them, ‘You know what we're doing that has got us this far, we've got to keep doing that.'"