VALDOSTA — Good football teams find ways to win. Valdosta did Friday night.

Valdosta escaped a tough football battle with a 27-26 victory over Tift County Friday night at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium.

Curtis Weatherspoon’s block on an extra point with 2:18 left enabled the Wildcats to escape with a big Region 1-AAAAA victory, and improve to 5-1 (2-0 region).

“I was real proud of the way we came back and won this game,” Valdosta head coach Rick Tomberlin said. “Tift County’s a real good football team, and we were missing two starters on defense. But we came back, and made some big plays on both sides of the ball. I’m real proud of this team.”

With Valdosta leading 27-20, Tift County staged a late scoring drive. Kaream Hess’ 1-yard run with 2:18 left cut the lead to 27-26. Tift opted to kick the extra point.

The snap was good, the hold was good. But Weatherspoon broke through the line, leaped, and tipped Tift kicker Jordan West’s kick into the air, and well short of the goalposts, keeping the score 27-26.

Valdosta’s Dontavius Sapp recovered the onside kick, then three straight David Arnold carries killed most of the clock. Kyle Rowe got off a 49-yard punt, pinning the Blue Devils at their own 12 with 5.4 seconds left. A Blue Devil screen pass was stopped at the Tift 25 on the final play of the game, and the Wildcats walked away winners.

Valdosta struggled early on, trailing 14-0 at one point. The Wildcats rallied and took a 19-14 lead early in the fourth quarter, only to have Tift respond with a touchdown to retake the lead, 20-19, with 7:07 remaining.

Valdosta responded with the winning drive. Arnold kept the drive alive with a four-yard run on third-and-3, then had runs of 14 and three yards to move the ball into Blue Devil territory.

Facing third-and-7 at the Tift 37, quarterback Michael Turner handed off to Arnold, who went right, then handed off to Perry King on a reverse. King raced around the corner, got a big block, and sprinted down the field untouched into the end zone to make it 25-20. Valdosta went for the two-point conversion, and Turner ran the ball in to make it 27-20.

That set the stage for the game’s thrilling end.

Tift dominated most of the first half, though they only had a 14-13 halftime lead. The Blue Devils gained over 200 yards on the Wildcat defense. Hess had only five fewer yards of total offense than the entire Valdosta team in the first half.

“We didn’t play well (early on),” Tomberlin said. “I think everybody wanted it so bad that they tried to do too much.”

On their first possession, the Blue Devils drove 75 yards in 11 plays, and looked ready to score. But Hess was stuffed on fourth-and-1 at the 5, and Valdosta escaped. Tift got the ball back quickly, when Turner was picked off by A.J. Brown, who brought the ball back to the Valdosta 25. But the Wildcats dodged another bullet when Jordan West missed a 44-yard field goal.

The Wildcats would not dodge a third bullet though, after Tift’s Micah McCant recovered a fumble on the VHS 20. On the next play, quarterback Malcom Dixon threw a middle screen to Justin Wilson. Wilson found open field, and raced into the end zone. West’s extra point gave Tift a 7-0 lead.