The Long County Blue Tide football team has seen an emergence since the arrival of head coach Mike Pfiester in 2021. Entering his fifth season with the Tide, Pfiester looks forward to the team continuing their success and doing even more.

In 2024, the Tide started the year 6-0, the best start in team history, and finished 7-4, the most wins in team history, with a fourth straight playoff appearance.

Pfiester gave a simple answer as to how the team will replicate that success in 2025: “Keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

“We gotta show up every day, keep lifting weights, work hard,” he said. “Try to perfect our craft, so to speak. We’re not going to change what we do or how we do it. Just going to try to get better at it.”

Pfiester mentioned the schedule helping the team out a little bit with the game against Calvary Day getting moved to the end of the season due to Hurricane Helene. This led to the team playing the now-defending region champions to close the season instead of in the middle of the year.

“We had that really challenging region game that got moved to the end, but I do think we can get off to a fast start again and that will be big for us,” he said.

Regardless of where the Tide play the Cavaliers, the back half of the 2025 schedule will look much tougher than the front. From October on, they will play three teams that made the state playoffs in 2024.

Southeast Bulloch made the quarterfinals in the AAA playoffs while the aforementioned Cavaliers made the quarterfinals in the Private playoffs. Jenkins made the second round of the AAA playoffs.

Of the Tide’s other seven opponents, none of them made the state playoffs last year. Pfiester hopes that the team will be playing well by the time they get to those tougher games down the line.

“Hopefully, we will have been able to clean up any mistakes and be playing at a high level when we get there,” Pfiester said. “The other thing is, we gotta stay healthy. Without a lot of depth on the line of scrimmage, you would like to think that maybe in some of those games early on, you could put yourself in a position where maybe late in the games some of the younger guys are getting to play, but that’s certainly not any guarantee. Everybody in our region’s got talented players.”

In 2024, the Tide were just a couple of plays away from beating both Jenkins and Southeast Bulloch and putting themselves in a position to not only play a first round home game in the playoffs, but be 9-0 and playing for a region championship against Calvary Day to end the season.

The Jenkins game came down to the last play as the Tide came up a half yard short of the winning touchdown as time expired. They lost 18-17. The Tide fell against Southeast Bulloch in the final quarter, 15-12.

Another trip to the postseason ended in heartbreak as the Tide entered the playoffs as the number 21 team and faced off against the 10th-ranked Upson-Lee Knights. The Tide came the closest they have ever come to the second round as they led 17-15 at the half before falling to the Knights 35-23 after both teams were held scoreless in the third quarter.

Pfiester looks for the team to take that next step and get over the hump and do something they have been working towards since the team made the playoffs in 2021: Play 12.

“It’s not experience. Our guys have it now,” Pfiester said. “They’ve played some of those bigger games, bigger moments. I think it’s good for our older guys to be able to experience those trips. It certainly would be nice to be able to host one of those games. I do think the new format gives us a better chance and at the end of the day, if we could have finished off Jenkins or Southeast Bulloch, we would have hosted and I think that would have given us a much better chance. It just comes down to the details. There were some mental errors that gave up big plays for (Upson-Lee) and eliminated big plays for us. It comes down to just executing.”

The team will miss some big pieces, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Kenny Pickens, the team’s all-time leading tackler, as well as Chris Hatfield, the team’s single season record holder for interceptions, both graduated with Pickens moving on to Berry College to play football and baseball and Hatfield moving on to South Carolina to play football.

Pfiester knows there are some holes, but believes they will be able to fill them pretty well going into season.

“Those are two all-timers, so huge shoes to fill. But we have a lot of guys that have experience and played defense for us,” Pfiester said.

Senior Dylan Tyler likely will play both ways at quarterback and linebacker while junior Isaiah Miller and senior Tyler Gamble will play big roles on the defensive line. Senior Wesley Williams got a lot of reps in the secondary and seems to be the number one guy going into the 2025 season.

On offense, the biggest question will be along the offensive line, with four starters graduating. Pfiester believes that is going to be the biggest question the team has going forward.

“We have kind of made a recommitment to our base offense and it’s proven to be, in the summertime I thought, really, really good for us,” Pfiester said. “We are going to be what we are.”

Tyler will lead the offense at quarterback with running backs Cortney Charles and 2024 leading rusher Jason Familia, who has been named to a host of preseason players to watch lists, seem to be the names to watch in the backfield.

However, Pfiester knows that a team that runs the ball 50 times a game needs a strong offensive line in front of them. They have a good starting group, but it’s the depth that worries them.

“The offensive line will, no question, be something that has to be developed,” he said. “There’s no depth. We’ve gotta stay healthy. You’re not going from a one to a two, you’re going from a one to a JV player. That’s a concern, but they’re going to work hard and be ready to play.”

The Tide took on McIntosh County Academy in a scrimmage on Friday, August 1 with the varsity taking a 16-0 victory and the JV tying the fourth quarter 6-6 before lightning cut the game short.

The team will open the 2025 season on Friday, August 15 against the Vidalia Indians at Buck Cravey Stadium in Vidalia. The Tide beat the Indians 20-10 to open the 2024 season.