The Dawson County faithful traveled to The Westminster School in Atlanta Friday night to get a glimpse of this year's 2015 football team.
The Tigers were well represented in the stands as they easily outnumbered the home crowd.
Behind the support from Dawsonville, the Tigers managed a 10-10 tie with a team that will contend for their region title and should go deep into the state playoffs.
"It was great being on the sidelines on Friday night," said Head Coach Sid Maxwell. "The crowd was great. I know that the young men made several comments that we had more fans at the scrimmage than Westminster. I believe the Dawson community wants to get behind and support these young men as we get ready for this season."
Westminster got on the scoreboard first with a 23-yard touchdown run. With the extra point, the Wildcats took a 7-0 lead at the 8:01 mark of the first quarter.
The Wildcats added a field goal from 38-yards out to take a 10-0 lead in the first.
Dawson County answered in the second quarter on a touchdown pass from quarterback Coey Watson to Austin Young from 24-yards out.
Young made a great over the shoulder catch between two Westminster defenders. Alan Sanchez added the extra point to cut the Wildcat lead to 10-7.
In the second half both teams played their backup players in an attempt to get them some valuable playing time.
Coach Maxwell's team tied the game with a field goal by Sanchez in the third quarter after a long drive stalled out by the Tiger offense.
"We made more than our share of mistakes, but that's normal with a new system. The good news is when we did make a mistake it was at full speed," Maxwell said. "I thought we were very competitive against a first class program. I thought our players gave tremendous effort on each play."
Maxwell said he felt OK about what he saw from both the offense and defense after installing new schemes on both sides of the ball this offseason.
"I thought we were solid for the first time running the new offense and defensive systems," he said. "We will use what we learned from Friday's game to focus on what we need to execute our defense, offense and special teams. Special teams will be our primary focus this week."
Up next will a trip to the Brickyard in Gainesville to face North Hall High School.
The Trojans played Flowery Branch last Friday in a preseason game in Gainesville. North Hall is coming off a 2-8 season last year under Head Coach David Bishop.
"This week we are going to work on improving us," Maxwell said.
Kickoff for Friday night's preseason game is set for 7:30 p.m.