TIFTON, Ga. — Tiftarea Academy head football coach Tully Payne would have rather been playing somewhere Friday night, but will not hesitate to say that his team had a remarkable season.

“We exceeded everybody’s expectations,” he said.

The Panthers finished 5-6 and advanced to the GISA Class AAA state tournament where it fell to John Milledge in the opening round, 42-0. The playoffs appearance was their first since 2014 and their second in the past eight seasons. Five wins, he said, was especially remarkable considering predictions. Payne said some had predicted the team to finish with as few as two wins.

Payne said that their record was not just a surprise to those who doubted them. “Pulling out five was a shocker,” he said.

Tiftarea’s victories came over three teams that played in the postseason: Georgia Christian, Terrell Academy and Westfield. Eight of their 10 regular season opponents went to state and five are still active in the playoffs.

The Panthers may have been eight points short of even finishing second in the region. They lost to Brookwood, 7-0, in September. Had that happened, three of Region 3’s teams would have had 2-2 marks.

Bumps and bruises, with some season-ending injuries kept them on their toes all year, causing Tiftarea’s already small roster of 28 players to have to constantly shift to increase depth.

The injuries even caused Payne to shake up his offense to suit his personnel.

“We went to running the ball a lot more,” he said.

Running, as it turned out, was Tiftarea’s forte. Spence Massey and Ahmad Mosley, before the latter was limited by an ankle injury, each had huge games in the backfield. Massey had a 200-yard game against Southland and ran for 380 yards and five touchdowns against Westfield. Mosley had a 250-yard game against Terrell.

Massey finished as the squad’s rushing leader, Payne estimating his total to be around 900 yards. More impressive is that he did not play running back, he said, until the second or third game. It was around the fifth game Payne said “he really got going.”

Massey, a sophomore, will return next season. Mosley, one of a handful of seniors, will not.

“It’s going to be hard to replace some of these,” he said.

Others departing will be quarterback Logan Carswell, who had to leave the pocket more and more frequently as the season progressed to be part of the rushing attack. Caleb Parmer, Logan Conger, Hunter Young, Will Godwin, Kymele Hart and McKinley Morehead make up the rest of the seniors listed on the roster.

Payne said that losing Morehead, the team’s starting kicker for the past two years, “will leave a big shoe to fill.”

Making state was huge for the group.

He said it “meant a lot to them.” When asked how they grown over the season, Payne said that “all of them have grown into fine young men.”

Tiftarea will have a larger group coming up from the middle grades. Fifteen players are expected to join the varsity squad next season.