COVINGTON, Ga — The 2024 football season in the state of Georgia is around the corner and on a beautiful Thursday evening at the historic Homer Sharp stadium, the Eastside Eagles defeated the Monroe Area Purple Hurricanes 31-10 in the scrimmage.

The Eagles led the scrimmage from start to finish as they were the team to get on the board first when junior quarterback Payton Shaw connected on a pass for a touchdown.

But, the story of the game was how the running game controlled the contest. JP Harris made his presence known in a loaded running back room for the Eagles. 

Harris finished the game with two rushing touchdowns with well over 100 rushing yards. Also, senior Jayden Barr found the end zone on a one-yard touchdown run.

“We have a pretty good group of running backs,” head coach Jay Cawthon said. “They really impressed me in the scrimmage and hopefully we can build on that heading into next week.”

The Purple Hurricane offense struggled for the majority of the scrimmage as the Eagles defense was swarming to the ball the entire night.

The defense was led by senior Tennessee commit Christian Gass, who forced multiple negative plays and only allowed three points in the first half. 

“I believe that we were flying around to the ball on defense and making plays when the opportunities presented itself,” Cawthon said. “Of course, we made mistakes but we are going to watch film  to clean up the mistakes for next week.”

Cawthon will be entering his fourth season as the Eagles head coach, while coming off another playoff appearance. They advanced to the second round of the Class AAAAA playoffs last season. 

The Eagles will take on the Newton High Rams next week in the first game for the Battle of the Newton Cup at Sharp Stadium. The game will start at 7:30 p.m. 

The Rams are led by second year head Josh Skelton and second starter at quarterback Deron Benson. Newton is coming off a playoff appearance as well. They were eliminated in the first round of Class AAAAAAA playoffs by the Camden County Wildcats.