Faux War Eagles!

a woman of otherwise stunning intelligence and allure claimed to me today that Atlanta's Marist School is the "forgotten private school of atlanta", and that Woodward Academy (technically a part of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport) had superseded it. this came as a surprise to me, having known woodward primarily by the distinctive yellow schoolbuses that scrambled out through north atlanta each weekday morning. i had assumed woodward to have yellow in their colors, but they apparently use red and grey, and just didn't bother to repaint after secondhand purchase from public SPED programs. a nuisance but rarely any kind of real threat, i knew them as the "faux war eagles", having copied our own mascot in days Before, in the long long ago. when we played them, i sometimes amused myself yelling "FAUX WAR EAGLES" when they got up a "GO WAR EAGLES", though i don't think anyone else did, and it probably served only to confuse.

first off, there is now a "Woodward North" in Johns Creek, Georgia, a region carved out of time, one which doesn't actually exist as anything but a shift in tax laws and racial demographics. so when we speak of woodward war eagles faux or otherwise, we must distinguish between these two venerable campuses. it seems likely that woodward might continue opening satellites basically wherever there's an Apple store. this is boujeeness of the first order and nothing more. at least in the last century the low-melanin students imported from these regions beyond the perimeter got the cultural experience of riding through College Park and Greater Henry County.

let's get down to brass tacks:. football state championships:

• faux war eagles aka Feagles: 1970, 1980
• marist: 1989, 2003, 2020

more, and all of them more recent. marist first took the field as the war eagles in 1912. i spent a solid quarter-hour searching for when woodward first played football, and couldn't. their site is a goddamn mess. it invites me to "write to a woodward parent", which sounds great:

TO: a_______'s dad
SUBJECT: woodward's first season

good sir, could you please look up when your school first played football
and ripped off Marist's established War Eagle name? i couldn't find it, but
maybe you can. also, i hope to date your daughter, should she consent to
hooking up with someone from atlanta's forgotten private school. i promise
i don't have bedbugs. anymore.

GO WAR EAGLES

--nick