Photo by James Nicholas.
Mountain Brook team captains watch the coin toss before a game between Mountain Brook and Pinson Valley high schools on Oct. 10 at Mountain Brook High School Spartan Stadium.
The Mountain Brook High School football team will be making its ninth consecutive state playoff appearance this fall.
The Spartans have put forth winning seasons every year since 2016 and have advanced in the playoffs each of the last four years.
Mountain Brook will look to do that for a fifth straight season. The Spartans played the first 10 weeks of the regular season before taking an open date on Nov. 1.
The playoffs begin on Nov. 8, with successive rounds being played each of the following three Fridays. The Class 6A state championship game is set to be the finale of the Super 7 Championships, played this year at Birmingham’s Protective Stadium on Friday, Dec. 6.
Mountain Brook plays in Class 6A, Region 6, which matches up with Region 8 in the first round of the playoffs. As of press time, the Spartans were sitting in the No. 3 spot in their region, which would send them on the road for the first round against either Fort Payne, Gadsden City or Southside-Gadsden. Whichever of those teams ends up as the No. 2 seed in Region 8 would host the No. 3 seed in Region 6.
Of those three potential opponents, the Spartans have never played Fort Payne but have had prior playoff matchups against Gadsden City and Southside.
As a program, Mountain Brook boasts a pair of state championships, won in back-to-back fashion in 1975 and 1976. The Spartans made it to the state championship game in 1996 and again in 2022 as well.
Last fall, the Spartans blew past Buckhorn 35-14 in the first round of the playoffs. They took eventual state champ Clay-Chalkville to the wire in the second round, falling narrowly 17-13.
