MOULTRIE – The Colquitt County sixth-grade football team fell behind early against Tift County on Wednesday at the Hawg Pen, but rallied to take a 32-20 victory and even its record at 1-1.

The Blue Devils scored first and led 8-0, but that would be their only lead of the day.

The Packers started their comeback when Cam Williams completed a pass to Jaycion Jones for a 55-yard play down to the Tift 8-yard line.

From there, Standen Reynolds ran between the tackles, found a seam and scored.

Jones ran in the 2-point conversion to knot the score at 8-8.

When the Tift County offense returned to the field, Colquitt’s Judd Summerlin recorded a big tackle-for-loss, putting Tift in third and very long.

On the obvious passing down, Jones intercepted a pass and returned it to the Blue Devil 14-yard line.

The next play, Brandon Green ran to pay dirt.

Williams ran in the conversion and the Colquitt County lead was up to 16-8 with just under a minute remaining in the opening quarter.

“I liked the way we responded to adversity,” head coach Travis Register said. “Tifton came to play, but we answered.”

Tift County completed a long touchdown pass, but failed on the 2-point try, and it looked like the Packers would take a scant two-point lead into the locker room.

But the offense wasn’t quite done.

With just a few ticks left on the clock, Williams made a contested catch, wrestling the ball away from a defender, and then accelerated, pulling away from Blue Devil defenders and coasting into the end zone just after the horn sounded for the end of the second quarter.

Jarren Harrell ran in the 2-point conversion and the Packers halftime lead was 24-14.

Both teams would add one more score apiece after halftime.

The Blue Devils scored on another long pass, despite two Packer defenders swatting the ball in the air.

A Tift County receiver was able to haul in the twice-deflected ball and pull away to narrow the gap.

The youngest Packer offense responded once again, mounting a drive that went to the Tift County 21-yard line before Williams capped it off with a dazzling run.

He took a handoff, needed to break a tackle at the line of scrimmage, but then hit a small crease and took off into the end zone.

Jones scored the conversion and the final margin.

The Packer defense needed one more stand, and Jarvis Lewis recovered a fumble at the Packer 7-yard line with just 26 seconds left in the game to seal it.

The win followed the seventh-grade team’s 14-0 win over Tift and completed the middle school sweep.

The sixth- and seventh-grade teams travel to Thomasville next Wednesday to take on Thomas County Central Middle School.