First-year Walton football coach Daniel Brunner has been named coach of the year for 2017 by the Cobbhsfootball website, and Raiders’ star receiver Dominick Blaylock was tabbed as offensive player of the week.
Blaylock led the 22-man all-Cobb team that was released just before Christmas, and that includes three other players from East Cobb high schools.
They include Walton linebacker Malik Adams, Kell offensive lineman Johnathan Bass, and Lassiter defensive back Derrik Allen.
Brunner, a former assistant at Walton, led the Raiders to an unlikely 11-1 season, after the program came off a losing season under Mo Dixon in 2016.
Walton’s only loss came in the state playoffs to eventual state runner-up Colquitt County, where Dixon is now an assistant. In Brunner’s first game, in the Corky Kell Classic, the Raiders defeated North Gwinnett, which went on to win the Georgia Class 7A state championship.
Brunner, who was named Cobb coach of the year by The Marietta Daily Journal, is a graduate of Roswell High School and also coached there before coming to Walton.
Before the season started, he inaugurated “Raider Day,” a jamboree-style event that included all the Walton football teams, from varsity down to the grade school-level.
With Blaylock, who has committed to play at the University of Georgia, and Adams returning, Walton is expected to contend in the region and state in 2018.
Bass was part of another Kell state playoff team under Brett Sloan, a former Walton assistant in his first year as head coach. Bass has signed to play at Georgia State University.
Allen, considered one of the top high school players in the country at his position, had another strong season for Lassiter, whose state playoff streak ended this season. He has signed to play at Notre Dame.
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