The Long County High School football team lost to Pierce County, 21-3, on Friday in Blackshear. The Blue Tide started off keeping the score close, only being down 7-3 at the half. However, two Pierce County scores in the third quarter put the game out of reach, handing Long County its sixth loss of the season.
“We played pretty good and we should have been up, 3-0, at the half, but you can’t take away anything from Pierce County,” Long County head coach Ron Flott said.
The Blue Tide defense held the Bears to three scores, which was the lowest points total against Long County in 14 games, dating back to the Blue Tide’s last win Aug. 27, 2010, when they defeated Bryan County, 20-7. 
Defensive coordinator Mitch Nobles said Long County’s defensive performance was the best he has seen in a long time.
“They’ve been playing hard all year, but they haven’t always been running the right scheme, and that has been killing us,” he said. “Finally, they started doing what they are being coached to do.
“They been fighting all along, but on Friday, (the defense) started being in the right position, being where we were supposed to be, playing our gap assignment.
“If I had to grade them, I would say against Pierce they were doing what they were supposed to do about 60 percent of the time. If we can get that number up to about 80% percent, we should be able to stop somebody.”
Despite the loss, Flott said several members of the Blue Tide played well, including Vanda Vareen, Kwanzi Lattimore, Brandon Adkins and Jeffery Hall. Putting up the lone score for the Blue Tide was placekicker Miguel Hernandez.
With the loss, Long County fell to 0-6 overall and 0-3 in Region 2-AA. Pierce County improved to 4-2 overall and remained undefeated in the region at 3-0.
Long County will travel to Nahunta on Friday to take on Brantley County (0-6 overall, 0-3 in the region).