By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LUCEDALE — George County has one of the top prep football recruits in the state of Mississippi.
What the Rebels don’t have is a win in the state playoffs over the past 16 seasons.
But head coach James Ray and his current crew hope to change all of that this season behind the play of standout senior quarterback Deuce Knight and several of his classmates.
Knight, a Notre Dame commit, is the highest-rated quarterback in Mississippi’s 2025 class. He passed for 1,420 yards with 15 touchdowns in seven games last season. He is the number four quarterback overall nationally from the 2025 class according to On3, and is the No. 2 overall recruit from Mississippi for the cycle.
Knight missed the first half of the season for the Rebels last year, but he returned in time to guide George County to an 8-4 overall mark and they earned the second seed in Region 4-6A. However, the Rebels still haven’t won a state playoff game since 2007 after visiting Terry upset homestanding George County 41-39 in the first round of the Class 6A South State playoffs to end last season.

“We had an incredible season, and won more games than any George County team in a long time,” Ray, in his fifth year at the helm of the Rebels, said in a recent interview. “But we still have to get over that playoff hump. On paper, we are supposed to be a really good football team. We have to continue to do what we did last season but on a more consistent basis.”
The eight wins last year for GCHS was the most since that 2007 season when the Rebels went 13-2 including a trio of playoff wins and played for the Class 5A state championship falling to powerful South Panola.
In addition to Knight, Ray and the Rebs will look to versatile two-way players Brenn Moody and Montrell Dortch on offense as playmakers as well as defensive back Kohl Bradley and linebackers Blaine Green and Layten Hyatt on the defensive side of the ball.

“We lost some key players but we’ve got a lot of guys back that have played a lot of snaps for us over the past two years,” Ray added. “We focused a lot in the spring on getting more physical.”
In a bit of an oddity, George County plays more non-region games (six) than it does Region 4-6A games (five). However, the league that the Rebels play in is considered one of the toughest Class 6A loops in the state.
“Our district is loaded,” Ray concluded. “I decided a few years back that if we could avoid having an open date then we would, so we have six games before district play starts. We try and make sure that our non-region opponents duplicate what we will face in region play.”
George County opens the season on Friday, Aug 30th in Hurley against East Central.