THOMASVILLE — The Thomasville Bulldogs have a chance to stay undefeated and pad their lead in the series history with a win against Thomas County Central on Friday night. The Yellow Jackets look to break through in the “win” column and tie the series history with the Bulldogs with a win of their own.

There will be much on the line Friday when the two crosstown rivals collide at the Jackets Nest.

Thomasville is not taking this game for granted, even though Central is 0-1 and was routed by Brooks County in the teams’ preseason scrimmage.

“This is standard operation for the way society is nowadays. There’s way too many knee-jerk folks or way too many people that put way too much emphasis on a very small sample size,”Thomasville coach Zach Grage said. “Central’s still extremely loaded. They’re trying to break in a new quarterback. I think they’re just going through a first couple of week woes. It happens. But don’t freak out. We’ve been in that cage. We’ve been 2-4 or 2-3 heading into our region schedule, I promise you, and then one of those years went to the quarterfinals and one of those years went to the semifinals.”

Florida High scored a 35-15 victory over Central last week. That followed a 28-7 loss to Brooks County the prior week. Central is looking to avoid an 0-2 start for the second straight year.

“At some point it’ll click. We hope it’s not Friday,” Grage said. “It’s a home opener for them. They are coming off a couple of tough games. You talk about kind of the junkyard dog mentality and being backed into a corner. That’s when you don’t want to mess with somebody. 

“I wouldn’t say there’s a ‘must’ or an ultimatum put on a game, but it’s going to be important for both of us. It should be. We could both be 10-0 going into this game, or we could both be 0-10. I promise you there are folks in Thomasville that would rather win this game than win a state championship.”

Thomasville leads the series history 27-26.

Thomasville is 1-0 after dispatching of Brooks County 42-34 last week.