The 1930's started with a stumble. Homer Sutton's
first year at the helm of the Blue Devil ship was 1930,
and it started with four consecutive losses. But
two of those losses were reversed when the conference
declared that Moultrie and Cairo used ineligible
players.
Sutton wound up
with a 11-9-1 record including a pair of Thanksgiving
losses to Fitzgerald, but he might be remembered most
for a promise he kept to his '31 team. He told
them he would take them to the coast for a postseason
game against powerhouse Glynn Academy if they beat
Moultrie.
Tift did win
that Moultrie game, but Sutton never made the trip.
Sutton moved schools, but the '32 team did make that
trip to Glynn. Riddled with injuries that year,
Tifton went 7-3 but lost that postseason game 37-0.
E.S.
Hollingsworth played football and baseball at Mercer and
took over the Tifton team in the fall of 1932. He
was 21-8-1 in three years. Tifton went 8-2 in '33
losing only to Valdosta and Albany, which were much
larger schools. Tifton would not join the largest
classification in the state to stay until late in the
60s. In 1935, the Blue Devils' reputation earned
them a bowl game. Leon High in Tallahassee invited
Tifton for a postseason game and tied the highly touted
Leon Lions 7-7.
The Devils'
reputation was not hurt by their invitation to be a part
of the first big South Georgia high school football
conference. Up north, schools had already formed
the North Georgia Football Association, and when the
South Georgia Football Association formed, Tifton was a
charter member.
These two
conferences organized a "state championship" format in
the 1930's that would eventually evolve into the Georgia
High School Association that earnestly began governing
high school sports.
Not all of the
teams in southwest Georgia were invited to be a part of
this conference. Teams like Sylvester, Camilla,
and Blakely were left out. They formed their own
conference, the Southwest Georgia Group. As their
growth allowed, they would become part of the SGFA.
In the 1935
game at Moultrie, the first printed reference to lights
appears. The local paper in Moultrie said in a
preview article that the game was going to be played
"under the flood lights."
In 1936, the
flu bug once again bit the Blue Devils. In 1917
and 1918, the flu was reportedly one of the primary
reasons the seasons were cancelled. In 1936, the
Tifton-Moultrie game was postponed due to the quarantine
law. The Tifton-Douglas game was postponed and
never made up.
Never making up
a game always hurts the pocketbooks. The 1930s
were no exception. Tickets were 50 cents for
adults and 25 cents for children.
1937 was a
story of two completely different teams. Tifton
opened with a 40-0 win over the Sylvester Eagles.
The Devils would not score again for five weeks taking
on some of the toughest competition in the state.
After losses to
Valdosta, Moultrie, Thomasville, Albany, and Waycross,
Spalding County came to Tifton to left with a 19-19 tie.
Spalding would finish 9-0-1 and won the Class B title
game over Moultrie while Tifton finished with wins over
undefeated Fitzgerald and Nashville.
The Nashville
game might also be the first night game as it is the
earliest reported game under lights.
In 1939, Coach
Newt Godfree made his debut. He was a big man that
only coached a pair of seasons. His 1939 team lost
to Bainbridge before crushing Sylvester 71-0. They
then lost to Thomasville before beating Douglas 66-0.
They played hot
and cold the rest of the year before routing rival
Fitzgerald 54-6. The inconsistency ended with the
decade, however, as Godfree's team went 10-1 in 1940.
