Walker’s football will not participate in the Class 3A-A private playoffs, the Marietta private school told the AJC and the GHSA on Tuesday.
The Wolverines are the second small private school to end their football season early. St. Francis, a north Fulton County school, forfeited its final regular-season game last week and ended its season. St. Francis had 21 players with only 14 healthy enough to have played last week.
Walker won two games but was not competitive in five region games against other smaller private schools this season. Walker’s roster on MaxPreps shows 30 players but only one senior with 12 sophomores and 11 freshmen.
“We have made the difficult decision to forego our upcoming playoff game because of a significant number of injuries affecting almost one-third of our roster,’' Walker athletic director Andrew Tulowitzky said in a statement to the AJC. “Player safety is our top priority. Being back in GHSA football this season brought its share of challenges, but has also provided a great experience for our student-athletes and momentum for the future of our program. Our community values the Friday night experience and we look forward to next season.”
The decisions of Walker and St. Francis underscore the disparity that exists in the GHSA’s Class 3A-A playoff division. The highest-ranked teams in that class – Savannah Christian, Prince Avenue Christian and Hebron Christian – each have several major Division I prospects.
In 2023, Walker played in the playoffs with the Georgia Association of Private and Parochial Schools, or GAPPS, to compete against schools with similar enrollment and resources. That led the GHSA to add a bylaw to discourage its member schools from playing with other associations’ playoffs.
More than a dozen smaller private schools left the GHSA in 2022 in part to compete with other smaller schools, although it’s not merely an issue of size. Walker has about 350 students, more than Prince Avenue’s 310, but far fewer than Class 3A-A private rivals Lovett and Greater Atlanta Christian, which have more than 600 students.
Tulowitzky was confident that Walker could build its program back up and noted the school’s numbers in its eighth-, ninth- and 10th-grade classes.
