It was three years ago that Rockmart visited Eagle Stadium in Coosa and turned future meetings between the two football teams into something more.

Tonight, the series is renewed with the Yellow Jackets again entering the Eagles’ Nest for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff.

And with subregion standings on the line the stakes are just has high.

“We’re just looking at one week at a time and this week is one of the biggest games of the season,” Coosa head coach Chad Perry said. “I’ve told our guys that this will be one of the biggest games they play due to the way things are now.”

With Region 7-AA adopting a region playoff format the last week of the regular season, teams vying for a shot at the postseason are under more pressure to keep their subregion record as spotless as possible.

“We’re both in the middle of region play and we’re both fighting for the same thing,” Rockmart head coach Dan Duff said.

“The Rockmart-Coosa game has always been a hard-fought, tough contest and I don’t see it being any different this year.”

In 2005, the Yellow Jackets came back from an 18-6 deficit in the fourth quarter to force the game into overtime and pull off a 25-18 win over the Eagles.

The victory figured into Rockmart’s first trip to the playoffs in 17 years and began Coosa’s still-unsatisfied quest to return to the postseason.

“We’ve got to be ready to play a very good football team,” said Perry, who was in his first year as the Eagles’ head coach when the Jackets pulled off their thriller.

“Their quarterback is one of the best athletes we’ll face all year and we’ll need to be prepared to play both sides of the ball,” Perry added.

Rockmart’s Brandon Haywood has been just as potent behind center as he was as a junior last season when he broke onto the scene to become a Rome News-Tribune All-Area selection.

Coosa (3-2, 1-0) is being propelled by its senior quarterback Shane Smith. Teammates Quentin Hight and Lebron Neal are making major contributions at running back.

“I think the kids have got a good focus and we’ve got a good game plan,” Perry said. “A win is definitely going to put us in a situation that we want to be.”

The Eagles’ record went from 2-0 to 2-2 before their 7-AA South opener last Saturday against Model in the annual Shrine Game at Barron Stadium.

Their 36-15 win was their largest victory this season.

“That was a big stepping stone for us to get ‘win’ back in our vocabulary and start off with a 1-0 subregion mark,” Perry said.

“Coming off of two losses, we had to take a step back and focus on ourselves. But with how we did last week, we are seeing where we are right now.”

Rockmart (3-2, 1-0) started out 0-2 after losses to Class AAA squads Cedartown and Cartersville but have rebounded with three wins in a row, beginning with a 39-20 win over then-ranked Bremen.

“We knew we were going to start off playing some tough opponents and we scheduled it like that to grow as a team,” Duff said.

“And even though we came out with losses, we still felt like we were getting better.”

After working to fix their large amounts of turnovers and penalties, the Yellow Jackets have taken to improving on both sides of the ball and notched their first shutout in three seasons last week with a 48-0 rout of Temple.

“There’s a lot of teams still in it right now and nobody really knows where the region is going to go,” Duff said. “Who ever gets this win will have a good standing for the rest of the year.

“It should be a fun game.”