Calhoun Falls Charter at Greenwood Christian
The Blue Flashes are coming off a difficult season that, if memory serves, saw their roster drop to about 11 kids at one point last year because of injury and attrition. It’s hard to imagine a more trying situation than that. “Coach, my hamstring tightened up again.” “RUB SOME DIRT ON IT JIMMY!” Seriously, kudos to those guys for sticking it out and finishing their season in 2017.From what I’ve read, the number are up somewhat, new coach Chris Watts has brought some new excitement and they appear to have an athletic QB in Avant Haris. Greenwood Christian, uh, is a Christian school in Greenwood and their coach’s name is Jolly Doolittle, which sound like a really happy pirate. Bout all I got for you on this’n Hoss. Dixie at Christ Church The Hornets have taken nice, incremental steps forward in recent years. Part of the way they’ve built confidence and manufactured some momentum is by scheduling down a bit out-of-region. Now with a couple of winning seasons under their belt, they are bidding farewell to loose bands of homeschooled children and stepping things up with a game against the Cavaliers. I haven’t paid as much attention to Christ Church since they moved up to AA, but I’ll take a stab here and guess they’ve somehow replenished the talent they graduated at the skill spots. They have all five guys back up front on offense. Dixie as a veteran backfield with RBs Chandler “Stuart” Smalley, Deiveon Donald and QB Bradley Nickles. Have some returners back up front too. I always applaud teams who are willing to schedule beefy, growed up man schedules. Dixie is doing that in a game that should serve as a good barometer of their progress. McCormick at Crescent For the first time since I started this INCREDIBLY POPULAR football and meat blog, the Chiefs will not have Mataeo Durant lined up in the backfield. I’m not sure how you adequately replace a talent like his without the help of some ethically-sketchy laboratory where they clone people and cross breed derby stallions with missiles. Seriously, not only was he a freakish athlete, he played like his britches were on fire and the opposition had stolen his water buckets. Silas Cannady will try to fills those trigundous shoes and the team has a good FB in Zi Holloway and an athletic QB with Caderrious Parks. They should do fine by the time region play starts. Not sure what to make of Crescent. They are a AAA team but three of their four wins last year came over small Class A programs. Mid-Carolina at Whitmire The Wolverines were a very young bunch last year, yet still won four games and contended for a region crown. Coach Charlie Jenkins gets every ounce of everything he can squeeze out of his teams. They run a double-wing offense, but unlike most squads who go that route, they don’t just bore the crap out of onlookers with 50 runs up the gut a game. They work a nice inside/outside game and do as good a job as anyone in this kind of offense at sucking you in and then crank-smacking you with the deep ball. Their kids also play their tails off. Haven’t seen Mid-Carolina this year, but I did last year in the preseason and thought they looked pretty good…and they proceeded to go 1-9 a year after a winless campaign so holy wow am I a keen judge of talent. C.A. Johnson at Great Falls I’ll be taking this one in tonight. The Red Devils are still really young, but they have some talent. Kaleb Funderburk is a good little QB who understands the offense and makes good decisions with the ball. James Strong runs with nice speed and Kelton Talford might be Class A’s most dynamic WR at 6’6 with spring-loaded legs. The team is scrapping the spread (though they’ll still work in some multiple receiver sets) in favor of a Cowboys-style, inside/outside zone rushing attack. In their jamboree matchup with Lewisville last week, though, what really stood out is how well the defense played. From my understanding, C.A. Johnson, like Great Falls, doesn’t have great numbers, but they have a few good athletes and are running their normal spread offense that will take a lot of deep shots. This is a chance for someone to get off to a good start. C.A. Johnson has two wins in the past two years, while Great Falls has 0. Now that I think about it, Great Falls’ last win was over C.A. Johnson…hmmmm. McBee at Andrew Jackson The Panthers are entering a new era with the retirement of Coach Charlie Poole, the most successful head man in program history. The new coach is Johnny Kline, a VERY young guy getting his first shot at running a program. My understanding is that he is bringing a spread attack with him…which makes my want to gauge my eyes out with my car keys. For as long as I have covered Class A football, the Panthers have run some variation of the bone. When a system is that ingrained, these changes are sometimes difficult and as unappealing to look at as a mayonnaise jar full of turtle poop. The program has also graduated a metric butt ton of talent in the past few years. Oddly, most of the really good players were named Wright. So, their prodigious procreation will need to pick back up. Seriously, they had an incredible run of talent the last few years, so they’ll hopefully have some youngsters step up. A.J. went 3-7 last year. Hemingway at Lamar How about this for a dadgum match-up on August 17th. You have the defending Class A champion Lamar Silver Foxes playing host to perennial contender Hemingway in what should be one of the state’s best match-ups. Lamar lost QB Rashard Coleman, a couple of backfield weapons including Tyrik Herrion and took a hit at LB. What they have is super-stud RB Jacquez Lucas, most of the O line back, several nice defensive pieces and a warehouse full of industrial strength, 55-gallon drums of whoopass. Hemingway was harder hit by graduation (16 starters) and has undergone an offseason coaching change. Darius Taylor, a phenomenal athlete, has been moved to QB and they have a DE Darius Williams who…seriously, skeeters hitting my windshield have a better shot at stopping my car than offensive linemen do blocking that guy. This should be a great one. Bethune-Bowman at Blackville-Hilda These two programs will engage in the battle for the Old Oaken Hyphen Trophy…or they should anyway. Both squads are breaking in new coaches with longtime Bambegr-Ehrhardt DC Corey Crosby taking over the Hawks and Glynn Darby ascending to the throne in the land of Mr. T Haircuts. I don’t know a ton about the Hawks other than in the preseason they’ve primarily been a running team, they’ve moved the ball effectively and Dylan Dickerson has been their leading rusher. I also know that defensively, they have a DL named Bobo, who I plan to glorify to the fullest extent possible because seriously…BOBO! The Mr. T Haircuts lost RB/angry-rocket-fueled-bowling-ball Makiah Simmons at running back from last year, but do return Braxton Wedgeworth III esq. (whose name either sounds like a golf pro at Fuzzwood Golf Estates, or a personal injury lawyer) who has a chance to be one of Class A’s best QBs. He’s an athletic guy who throws the ball well and I’m figuring the new offense (they’ve gone from spread to I) will be centered around his skills. Edisto at Hunter-Kinard-Tyler HKT is coming off a nice season that saw them win a playoff game, but they’ll be breaking in a new quarterback in Daijon Palmer. The good news is he’s playing behind what is supposed to be an improved offensive line and the team does have nine starters back on defense, which is a plus. As an aside, let me log a complaint…Hunter-Kinard-Tyler is not located in Hunter, Kinard or Tyler. It’s in Neeces. Why isn’t the name of the school Hunter-Kinard-Tyler-Neeces? Whither Neeces? No clue on Edisto. Let’s move on… Ridge Spring-Monetta at Batesburg-Leesville This is another huge opening-week matchup. RS-M seems primed for a big season, with most of the talent back from last year’s upperstate runner-up. They are breaking in a new QB with underrated Tyson Bettis having graduated. Their offense is sometimes a little like a person getting stoned…I should rephrase that. I mean like an old school, medieval deal where you tie somebody to a tree and fling rocks at them. It’s methodical, it’s painful, it’s physical and it’s really hard to stop, what with you being tied to a tree and whatnot. They’ll just flog you with a veteran O line and a stable of experienced, productive backs. They’re even better on defense, where they held eight opponents to 8 or fewer points last year and have the bulk of their starters back, including all three starting linebackers. B-L is a top-tier AA program every year. This has the makings of a tremendous game. Wagener-Salley at Pelion The Stump-whooped All-Stars seem to believe they have a shot to make a run this year. I don’t know that we’ll know where they stand on that front after tonight against a Pelion team they beat by three touchdowns last year. They excel if you want to try to stand toe-to-toe and have a tater-kicking contest with them. Where they’ve struggled since their resurgence of the past few years is in playing athletic teams that throw the ball. Might not see if they’ve improved there until they face Williston later in the year. Williston-Elko at Barnwell Bravo to W-E for lining up a rugged out-of-region schedule, including this match-up with a very good Barnwell squad. W-E did lose a lot of starters to graduation, but they’ve got a huge roster for a Class A school and a scary football robot in Keshawn Toney who basically catches every pass in his zip code and pummels the children unfortunate enough to end up in his path. W-E gave Barnwell a heck of a game last year and I expect much the same tonight. Regretably, due to time constraints, the lowerstate is getting super crappy “in other action” treatment today… The OC at Baptist Hill Estill at Allendale-Fairfax Military Magnet at Lake Marion St. John’s at Phillip Simmons Branchville at Colleton Prep Kingstree at C.E. Murray Cross at Burke Manning at Scott’s Branch The Sausages at Creek Bridge West Columbus at Green Sea-Floyds
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |