Estill closes book on athletics history in Class A track and field state meet
Amirah Lewis, Jamaisha Roberts win state titles
Estill – The final chapter in the history of Estill High School athletics was written on Monday, May 22, with the South Carolina High School League Class A track and field state championship meet at Lower Richland High School in Hopkins.
Estill is closing and merging with Wade Hampton to form Hampton County High.
“Monday will be bittersweet,” said Marcus Livingston, who will go down as Estill’s final athletic director and head coach for football, girls basketball and track, after the meet was delayed for four days due to rain on the originally scheduled date. “It will be the end of the existence as Estill High School as we joined Wade Hampton to become the Hampton County Hurricanes.
“They're (the student-athletes) are pretty much aware of what's going on,” Livingston added. “It's not something that they’re worried about. I think there’s actually excitement (for the merger).”
And it ended up being a pretty good day for Estill. Amirah Lewis won the 400-meter hurdles and Jamaisha Roberts won the triple jump.
Lewis. went into the 400 hurdles as the No. 1 seed after winning the lower state championship.
Jamaysia Miller was seventh in the 100-meter dash, which is what she was seeded. Faith Brooks finished eighth in the 400 hurdles and also qualified in the 100 hurdles.,
Estill's 4x100 relay team finished fifth and the 4x400 team just missed out on scoring with a ninth-place finish.
Estill had to make due without Ka’Dejah Smoak, a junior who had won the state title in 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes each year since she was a seventh-grader, according to Livingston. Smoak tore an anterior cruciate ligament during basketball season.
“Smoak getting hurt kind of took away from what we wanted to do,” Livingston said. “Still, we had a lot of young girls step up for us.”
On the boys side, Darius Brooks finished second in the high jump. Kevon Chisolm finished third in the shot put.
Livingston said the boys numbers were limited this year, and he believes the fact Estill would not be playing football anymore factored into that.
“We kind of used track to catapult us into spring football,” he said. “With no football here, I think that affected our turnout.”
Livingston will not be part of the new Hampton County High. Instead, he will be the head coach for football and girls track and the co-athletic director at Edisto High School in Cordova. Livingston is a 2002 graduate of Edisto.
Livingston believes Estill had a strong finish athletically in its final year of existence.
“For it to be the close of the school, it was an awesome year,” he said. “We were able to win the region in football and make a deep run into the playoffs (going 11-2 and losing in the third round to Cross). In boys basketball we won region as well and got all the way to lower state.”
The girls basketball team was hampered by the injury to Smoak, an All-State performer. The Lady Gators finished second in the region, snapping a streak of four straight region titles. They lost in the second round of the playoffs to Carvers Bay.
“We had a productive year overall,” Livingston said. “We had a great tradition of athletics here at Estill High School.”
About us
Recognizing the achievements of young athletes in South Carolina since 1986.