Rivalry resumed: Dalton, Northwest to face off for first time since 2019

Published 6:00 pm Thursday, August 29, 2024

Northwest Whitfield High School head football coach knows that his team is 2-0. He knows that Dalton is 0-2. He knows that his team beat North Murray and that Dalton lost to North Murray.

He also knows that none of that matters.

Not in a rivalry game, and especially not in one that is being played for the first time in five years.

“I don’t care if anybody wants to do the score comparison thing for North Murray-Dalton, Northwest-North Murray, forget it,” Robinson said. “Dalton’s good. They’ve got good athletes and they’ve got good coaches. Our kids are going to have to come to play.”

For the first time since the 2019 season, Dalton and Northwest Whitfield will share the football field Friday night.

The 2-0 Bruins host the 0-2 Catamounts in Tunnel Hill at 7:30 p.m.

Dalton, which shared a region and played Northwest annually for many years, leads the series over the Bruins 32-5 overall.

The last time Northwest beat Dalton was 2004, a 38-35 win. Since then, Dalton has won 11 straight, culminating in a 59-7 romp for the Catamounts the last time the two schools met in 2019, with now-NFL running back Jahmyr Gibbs torching the Bruin defense.

The five-year gap between games is the biggest in the series since another five-year span in the 1990s.

Starting with the first matchup in 1976, Northwest and Dalton played every season until 1993. From 94 through 97, the two didn’t meet after playing in separate classifications, but the rivalry resumed in 1998 and ran uninterrupted through 2009. After another two seasons off, the two schools played in 2012 and 2013 as region mates, then in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 as non-region opponents.

“It’s exciting,” Dalton head coach Kit Carpenter, who played against Northwest during his time as a Catamount player, said of the Northwest game before the season. “Any time you get to play locally against another team, you really get that excitement. It’s great for us, and it’s great for the community.”

Robinson, who has coached Northwest in six games against Dalton — all losses — said he’s looking forward to that exciting atmosphere too.

“Our kids get the opportunity to play in front of a huge crowd,” Robinson said.

The game will also be televised on CW Chattanooga’s Friday Night Rivals, adding to the atmosphere.

Northwest thumped Coahulla Creek 35-0 on the road to begin the season and pulled away from North Murray 29-12 last week in Chatsworth. The game will be the first home game for the 2-0 Bruins.

Quarterback Gavin Nuckolls has passed for five touchdowns and run for another.

Dalton, meanwhile, has one total touchdown on the year as the Catamounts hit the road for the first time after the 0-2 start. After a 22-9 defeat to North Murray, Dalton was outclassed by Class 4A’s sixth-ranked North Oconee in a 42-0 loss.