Milton (Ga.) unfazed by the bright lights, national audience

Everything the No. 13-nationally ranked Milton Eagles football team has been working for since the early summer comes to a culmination tonight at the $62-million state-of-the-art Phillip Beard Stadium, home of the No. 7-ranked Buford Wolves.

To many high school football teams around the country, this might be a lot to take in for a regular season opener. For Milton, this is something they should be plenty used to by now.

“One thing about being a football player at Milton is big games, big venues, national audiences on TV at this point should not catch you off guard because that’s something that we built. Something we worked up to doing. Something we want to work hard to hold onto,” Milton head coach Ben Reaves said.

Multiple examples as such could be found right at the beginning of last season when the Eagles opened up the season at their own home venue and held off the Wolves for a 13-10 victory.

The following week, Milton had to travel down to South Florida for the Broward County Classic High School Football Showcase and took on Florida state power Plantation American Heritage. There, the Eagles would be unflappable and defeated the Patriots, 37-28.

That very Eagles-Patriots game was on national television and helped catapult Milton into the rest of their 2024 slate on the way to a 15-0 season and the GHSA AAAAA state championship.

“You know we are always talking about one goal ultimately and that is reaching our ceiling as a team,” Reaves said. “Every team has a different ceiling. Not every team in Georgia right now has what it takes to win the championship, but every team in Georgia does have a ceiling they can get to and they look at this is as far as we could take it and you know we did everything that we could this year with the team, with the circumstances provided to us and so for one, (winning a championship) is our ultimate goal.”

Don’t count Milton’s staff and players to be in awe of Buford’s new swaggy digs, that has everyone around the country agape when it comes to the new football facility.

Reaves quickly pivots to the fact his program is used to playing for the GHSA state championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and numerous other major events around the Northwest Georgia region.

“(The stadium) should not be a factor at all with our kids because we’re used to playing at Mercedes-Benz (Stadium), which is a bigger venue, which is the more expensive venue,” Reaves added. “The lights at Mercedes-Benz are brighter. There’s more video screens, it holds more people. So all of the external things about this game are not gonna throw our kids off because that’s what they expect whenever they play football at Milton High School.”

This particular Milton team, though, isn’t last year’s state championship-winning one that featured the likes of Luke Nickel, CJ Wiley, Ethan Barbour and TJ Lester on offense.

Reaves acknowledges the biggest challenge his team will face heading into tonight’s titanic tilt with Buford is youth, inexperience across the board. If the Eagles can get into a flow of things early on, Milton could have a chance to replicate what they accomplished a year ago.

“Just just the youth, you know the inexperience right now,” Reaves added. “We’re replacing seventeen starters, so just guys trying to get their feet wet in a game against the number seven team in the country. Get those guys playing fearless, playing reckless. It’s okay to mess up, but you got to mess up at full speed, so just the inexperience we have as a team right now because we have we have a talent. We have the people in the right spots. We have what it takes to push for a three-peat and another state championship, but there are some growing pains that we’re gonna have to get out.”