Marist heads into Georgia’s spring championship season with the overall lead in the inaugural AJC Varsity all-sports championship standings, putting the Atlanta school in front of every other Georgia High School Association program after the winter run. The War Eagles have won three state championships during the 2025-26 school year and have built a total of 1,123.7 points.
The weight of that lead comes from more than the titles themselves. Marist had four other teams finish in the top four, giving it the kind of across-the-board strength the system is designed to reward. Kate Harpring led Marist to the girls basketball championship last month, and the school also won state titles in boys swimming and girls swimming in early February.
The standings are modeled after similar competitions used by college divisions and other high school associations, with sports weighted by NFHS and statewide participation numbers and by the number of championships the GHSA awards. Schools can earn up to 100 points in each of 31 GHSA sports, and a school’s overall score is built from its top eight boys finishes, top eight girls finishes and next-best finish regardless of gender or coed. An overall winner will be declared in each classification, along with the top boys program, top girls program and a top school in each region.
Marist leads second-place North Oconee by 163.8 points in Class 4A, the largest gap among the classes named in the early standings. Creekview of Class 5A has already won championships in boys cross country, fast-pitch softball, boys dual wrestling and girls basketball and holds a 10.1-point lead over Milton. Hebron Christian, sitting on 1,000.6 points in Class 3A-A Private, has won boys cross country, football, volleyball and girls basketball, while Greater Atlanta Christian is second there with titles in gameday cheerleading, boys swimming and girls swimming. Columbus leads Class 2A with 838.1 points and a 3.8-point edge over Morgan County, while Buford, Jefferson, Bremen and Wilcox County lead Class 6A, Class 3A, A Division I and A Division II, respectively.
The first-year system is already wide enough to show how hard it is to keep a school out of the standings altogether. Only 31 of the GHSA’s 457 schools failed to earn any points in the fall and winter playoffs, and 19 of those were members of Class A Division II. That leaves the spring season with the race still open in several classes, but Marist has already done the one thing that usually decides a championship run: it has proven it can score everywhere.
