With just two weeks remaining in the 2026 North Carolina high school football regular season, Ashley controls its own destiny.
Standing 5-3 (3-1 Carolina Coast), the Screaming Eagles can claim at least a share of their first conference title in program history if they win their final two regular-season matchups.
That's a far cry from where Ashley stood just four weeks ago.
After opening the season with two inspiring come-from-behind victories, Ashley stumbled through a three-game losing spell that dropped it below .500 at 2-3 at the midway point of the season.
For first-year coach Adam Purzitza, the skid offered an early lesson in just how long and winding the road through a high school football season can be.
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Purzitza acknowledged his team wasn't "handling success correctly" early in the season, but says the turnaround has been driven as much by the players as the coaching staff.
"It's the players, guys stepping up, listening to each other… that's really where it's all starting for us right now," Purzitza said.
One of those players is senior linebacker Harris McKoy, one of Ashley's leading tacklers. McKoy says the journey this fall has been one of steady growth, even when the results on Friday nights didn't always reflect it.
"It really shows what we've come from," McKoy said. "We look back at what we came from this summer and the weeks past and just see what we need to do better."
Four weeks after falling to 2-3, Ashley has flipped the script.
Three consecutive conference victories, most recently a convincing 27-0 shutout of New Hanover in Week 9, have put the team in a position few might have expected a month ago.
Now, just two games separate Ashley from a piece of program history. The first hurdle comes at home against West Brunswick, a matchup in which Ashley appears to have the upper hand.
The second is considerably more daunting.
Ashley will close the regular season on the road against Hoggard, a program it has spent a quarter-century trying to beat. The Vikings (7-1, 4-0) are a perfect 26-0 against Ashley since the programs first met in 2001, outscoring the Screaming Eagles by a staggering 990-252 margin.
Ashley's closest attempt to snap that streak came two seasons ago, when it pushed Hoggard to the brink before falling 35-27 at home.
No other meeting in the series has been decided by fewer points.
The history is lopsided, and the odds of upsetting one of the East's top teams aren't exactly in Ashley's favor.
But with a conference title within reach, the team isn't particularly concerned with what the history books say, or whether anyone outside their locker room believes they can pull it off.
"We know that a lot of people don't really respect us," Purzitza said. "We don't really buy into that. We're just trying to build off what's going on right now."
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Against gargantuan odds, Ashley football chases historic conference title
