Latest news, weather and high school sports for Albany and Southwest Georgia

ALBANY, GA -- Saturday, Sept. 11 is the Georgia Independent School Association cross country tournament sponsored by Deerfield-Windsor School. They anticipate it will be the largest meet like this the school has had. 

“We’re very excited! We have 18 schools coming in with over 525 runners,” says Cross Country Coach Cathy Jones.

“It’s definitely a different course for people who are coming into down. A lot of people from, like, Macon are used to the hills and down here we’ve got more humidity,” says Cross Country Runner Hannah Stern. 

The team is expecting over 1,000 people – runners and their family – to come into town. The school has hosted tournaments like this before but have never received a response like they have this year. 

“We’re very excited for our school, we’re very excited for our community because these people are going to stay here, have lunch here, maybe do some shopping, so it becomes a community event,” says Jones. 

Students won’t just be running around the course this weekend, they’ll be running around town shopping and eating out. 

“I’m probably going to be helping them out too, because when we go to visiting meets we definitely help out the restaurants and stuff so it’ll probably be the same results with them,” says Cross Country Runner Taylor Withers. 

Chick-Fil-A is busy on a normal day, but when big groups like the cross county tournament come into town...

“It’s packed, it’s just absolutely packed! The drive thru is full all the way around, and it’s wonderful,” says Chick-Fil-A Shift Manager Steven Mainor. 

Along with their anniversary sale, Unique Accessories off Dawson will have a big group coming into town that could make for big business. 

“ Hoping it’ll be really good for business. I think we’ll have a lot more customers and business should be good,” says Denise Giles of Unique Accessories.