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Calhoun Falls Charter- 8 Dixie- 28 Spartanburg Christian Academy- 6 Greenwood Christian- 33 Ware Shoals- 20 Whitmire- 36 Branchville- 16 Lamar- 43 East Clarendon- 6 Lewisville- 40 Eau Claire- 16 Hannah-Pamplico- 20 Timmonsville- 16 Blackville-Hilda- 44 Denmark-Olar- 6 Williston-Elko- 57 Estill- They were but eight touchdowns and one field goal from claiming victory! Wagener-Salley- 28 Hunter-Kinard-Tyler- 6 Ridge Spring-Monetta- 46 North- Ladies and Gentlemen…Clint Black! Baptist Hill- 18 Cross- 14 Green Sea-Floyds- 61 Military Magnet- 3 Hanahan- 20 St. John’s 14 Bethune-Bowman- 44 C.A. Johnson- 20 C.E. Murray- 50 Creek Bridge- Don’t say they had no score BECAUSE ZERO IS A SCORE! Edisto- 20 Scott’s Branch- 18 Hemingway- 67 Waccamaw- 6 Breakdown- As we are getting deeper into the season and more teams begin region play, we’re having fewer “up” games, though Class A schools did go 3-3 in contests against schools of higher classification this week. It was a rare case this week where the losses were actually more surprising that the wins. After what Hemingway did to Waccamaw, the Warriors may be walking funny and speaking in a voice that’s an octave or two higher than it was on Thursday. Waccamaw came in winless, however, and Hemingway has just been crank-smacking (a term I just made up that means “whoopin’ real bad”) everyone they’ve played. Maybe it’s just me, but when a 1A team is 4-0, has only played AA teams and has beaten them by a combined score of 223-51, I don’t think there is a term in our language that properly describes that level of dominance; hence crank-smacking. They figure to get a much stiffer test in their final non-region game this Friday at C.E. Murray. The two have split in the past two years in very competitive games…Lewisville’s win over Eau Claire was in no way surprising either. For one, Eau Claire (who as I understand is getting better in tiny, incremental, itty-bitty, barely discernable baby steps) hasn’t had a winning record in 31 years. Also, Lewisville is loaded up on front-line talent and they are starting to get healthy. They got one injured offensive lineman back this past week (2016 all-state pick Quay Simpson), have some other guys who have played through injuries but are getting well and it’s made a difference. The passing offense struggled a little early on, but is now operating efficiently and creating big plays. Also, Quentin Sanders didn’t decide to start sucking at football in the past few weeks and still averaging right at 200 total yards a game. The defense is getting major contributions from Josh Belk (who had an ankle injury early), Jaylen McFadden (who looks and plays very much like a tank in cleats) and Mikial Fourney among others. The Lions have one more pre-region tune-up against C.A. Johnson before starting region play against McBee…Speaking of C.A. Johnson, they were on the receiving end of a fairly vigorous prodding from Bethune-Bowman in Class A’s last “up” win of the week. The Mr. T Haircuts ran for gigantic yardage with Makiah Simmons (who is cut from that same tank with cleats and rocket boosters cloth and McFadden) running for touchdowns of 70, seven and four yards. Braxton Wedgeworth III (I don’t know if he’s the III or not, but it just seems to fit so I’m going with it) had scoring run of 69 and seven yards and blocked a punt that was returned for a touchdown. I’m willing to bet that “starting QB” and “blocked a punt” rarely appear in the same sentence outside of Class A unless accompanied by “ain’t no way in hell our.” So, the Mr. T Haircuts bounced back nicely from their shutout loss to Wagener-Salley last week. They get Whitmire this week, then an off week before enduring a BRUTAL three-week stretch that features C.E. Murray, Cross and Scott’s Branch…In another brilliant segueway SPEAKING OF SCOTT’S BRANCH they lost Friday. Now, they lost to AAA Edisto, who has a 3-1 record, so that’s not a giant black mark on their record like I would get in school on algebra exams when I would write “yo mama” as the answer to every problem. It’s a smaller mark, perhaps drawn in pencil. I guess since they’d beaten Bamberg-Ehrhardt the week before, fairly convincingly, I had expectations they’d knock off another big boy. Still, it sounded like a great game. They led 12-6, fell behind late 20-12, then scored with under three minutes to play, went for two and didn’t get it. They don’t have a soft touch this week at all, facing Timmonsville…St. John’s was knocked from the ranks of the unbeaten this past week, dropping a 20-14 decision to Hanahan. I inadvertently left their game off last week’s preview because I saw on a popular website (no need to embarrass anyone, we’ll say it was something called LaxKreps.org) that they were off. Well obviously they weren’t. Their coach was kind enough to send some stats to me and those pretty well spelled out why the team had already been able to drub AAA, AAAA and AAAAA competition. They throw the ball efficiently with Kam Smiley, but they also make explosive plays in the passing game, averaging almost 20 yards per completion. They throw to the tight end a lot (K.J. Robinson), which in the era of slapnuts, five-wide, hoo ha spreads is a lost art, but man, I love seeing teams chunk it to a big guy and letting him do his thing. Smiley is obviously an athlete (was averaging over 100 yards a game on the ground going into this week) but unlike some wacky doo toot toot, empty set, horse hockey we now see every week, they don’t JUST rely on their QB to run it, also getting more than 100 a game out of Jalen Hammond. They also force turnovers and play salty defense in general. I’d like to tell you what happened Friday, but as I went to read about the game I was informed I’d shot my limit on free articles for the month. I did manage to see that Smiley had a good game with 244 yards through the air right before getting locked out. As with Scott’s Branch, the anticipation was high given that they’d won three big “up” games already, but a closely played, hard-fought loss to a AAA team shouldn’t make you question anything. I, as of now, have about four teams in my mind that I think have a shot at winning it all in the lowerstate and St. John’s is still on the list…Over the past year, I have compared Baptist Hill to everything from fireworks (particularly those blacksnakes that just made it look like the ground was a’poopin’) to an attractive woman with stank-nasty breath. I did that for two reason, one being that I make terrible analogies and the other that while they’ve put up huge numbers and have looked impressive, I didn’t know how much substance was really there because since they started winning again last year, they had beaten exactly one team with a winning record (Bethune-Bowman, who finished 6-5 last year). Well, now that they have beaten Cross, that girl’s breath smells like mint leaves and rainbows. They now have a signature, quality win. Corey Fields didn’t have a super-efficient day throwing the ball, connecting on less that half his passes, but he still had 301 yards through the air and ran for 73. So, he had 375 of is team’s 401 yards, giving him nearly 1,200 total yards in three flippin’ games. Even more impressive to me, is that they really won the game on defense, limiting a potent Cross rushing attack and allowing only 14 points. They also demonstrated a clutch element, rallying from a late fourth quarter deficit, then making a tackle at the two-yard-line going in as Cross almost pulled off some Stanford-Cal, multiple laterals shenanigans in a late untimed down. Cross will be fine and should bounce back against Lake Marion this week. Baptist Hill will, for the first time, get a vote in my top 10 poll. They have a test this week in North Charleston, but the only game remaining on the slate after that where they won’t be a considerable favorite in Oct. 6 against St. John’s. Also, their school is conveniently located right near Peters Point Road, which makes me laugh because despite all the physical evidence to the contrary, I am 5… Quick Hits- I’m not a braggy, “I told you so” type. I’ll just point out that some BLAWG, not necessarily this one, one dedicated to smoke meat and 1A football, totally called Whitmire to end Branchville’s unbeaten start…Hey, so Shaquille Johnson from Green Sea-Floyds did OK Friday, scoring five touchdowns. You’re all like, WHAAAA, FIVE TOUCHDOWNS IS CRA CRA. Now comes the part when I tell you he had five touchdowns in the second flippin’, expletive, dadgum, holy crap quarter. Then you’re all like WHA WHA WHA?!?!?!?! And I’m feeling you on that. Green Sea got to 2-2 with that win after a couple of very close losses to Aynor and Loris. Now that get Camden Military which should make them 3-2 headed into their match-up with Lake View. Remember, they gave Lake View their toughest regular-season battle last season…I talked to new C.E. Murray Coach Chad Wilkes before the season started and he told me he was tweaking the offensive attack of the War Eagles a little bit. He wanted to keep that hard-nosed rushing attack, but did want to supplement it with some spread concepts and a complimentary passing game. Well, he appears to have succeeded since Elijah Bey threw six touchdowns Friday against Creek Bridge. Three of those went to super stud, excels at literally every position athletic freak Darius Rush, while Sean Swaringer caught two. They’ve got a big one this week (Hemingway), one where some offensive versatility could sure come in handy…Hey, not to scare anybody or anything, but Rashard Coleman threw four touchdowns to four different receivers as Lamar roundly rogered East Clarendon. So, no no, go ahead and load the box to stop that crazy productive running game…This has nothing to do with 1A at all, but a friend of mine finds it delightfully amusing that I refer to Johnsonville as “The Sausages.” He wanted me to point out to everyone that Mullins handled the Sausages Friday and I’m moving on…I’ll just close by pointing out that Ridge Spring-Monetta is now playing 1A schools after starting with a couple of AA heavy hitters and have outscored their like-sized opponents 85-0. Suggested Reading… Seriously, all we lacked to recreate Cal-Stanford was some bassoon player eating one in the end zone. A BLAWG that talks about the ground making BMs and invented the term “crank-smacking” said Whitmire would beat Branchville but I’m not saying which BLAWG so it’s not bragging. You can read about the Mr. T Haircuts winning, Scott’s Branch losing and check some other game capsules here, or you know what, you can just pretend you did and keep trying to live that lie, Bob, but we all know the truth. You’re still like OH NO HE DIDN’T. And this story is like OH YES HE DID! This doesn’t pertain to 1A really, it’s just an excellent, well-written story about concussions (not one of those "sky is falling, let's all live in a plastic bubble ones) and one young lady’s struggle to return to athletics by my pal Jed Blackwell. Everything can’t be ground poop and slapnuts y’all. Complaints, suggestions, helpful hints, invitations to take a flying leap…leave them in the comments, tweet me @CNR_Sports or email at [email protected]
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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