Manning – After a couple of seasons in which the coronavirus pandemic really derailed the
Manning High School football program, Monarchs head coach Reggie Kennedy and his staff got it back
on the tracks last season.
After coming up with just one victory in the two previous seasons, Manning went 9-3 last year
and finished second in Region 7-AAA. The Monarchs won a playoff game as well, beating Lakewood
44-42 in three overtimes, before losing to Gilbert in the second round.
Kennedy believes Manning will be able to build off of last season when it opens the season at
home at Ramsey Stadium on August 18 against Kingstree.
“It's going pretty good,” Kennedy said of the Monarchs’ spring and summer workouts. “We've
got some good pieces coming back. We lost a lot, but we had a good off season and a good
spring and a good summer. We got in about 15 days of practice during the spring.”
While Kennedy, who is the athletic director for Clarendon County School District, is back in
the fold along with several other head coaches from last season, there have also been some
changes in the Manning athletic department.
Charlie Richards will be the athletic director, stepping in for Doc Lewis, who is now the athletic
director at fellow Clarendon County school Scott’s Branch, about 10 miles away in Summerton.
However, Lewis will continue to be the boys golf head coach for Manning.
Richards came to Manning last year as an assistant on the football team and with the track and
field program.
Another big change in the athletic department is Patrick Clark as the new boys basketball head
coach. Clark was hired to replace Lamont Britt, who left Manning after one year as head coach to take a
similar position at Swansea.
Clark has been out of high school basketball for four years, his last coaching job being at North
High School in Orangeburg County. Clark led the Keenan girls program to a state championship in
2008. He also had coaching stops at Barnwell and Estill.
He takes over a program that went 20-6 and won the Region 7 championship. The Monarchs beat
Camden 72-67 in the first round of the state playoffs before falling to Lower Richland 61-49 in the
second round. Clark will have to replace All-State guard Justin Daniels as well as 6-foot-8-inch post
player Jeh’Qwuayn Hilton. Daniels averaged over 25 points per contest, while Hilton averaged 13 points
(third on the team) to go along with team highs in rebounding (7.4) and blocked shots (4.6).
The baseball program will have a new head coach with a very, very, very familiar face. Raymond
Gibbs, a slick fielding third baseman for the Monarchs under head coach Rick Coker back in the in the
late 1980s who has been an assistant for several years as well as the statistician for the football and
basketball teams, will take over the baseball program. Gibbs replaces Justin Gandy.
Manning will have a new boys and girls soccer coach in Ryan Glosson. Spencer Thomas, who
was the boys soccer coach last season, will remain as the wrestling head coach. Thomas founded the
program three years ago.
Verner Hilton will be back for her third season as the girls basketball head coach. After going 6-
11 in her first season, the Lady Monarchs went 15-11 last season and reached the state playoffs.
Dontavis Miller is set to return as the boys and girls track coach, while longtime head coach
Kimberly Ferrari is back in charge of the boys and girls cross country teams. Catherine Mahoney is
returning for her second year as the softball head coach, while Holly McCabe will be back for her second
year as the girls tennis head coach.
Sonia Daniels returns as the volleyball head coach. She helped restart the program at Manning in
2019.
Kennedy’s football staff will be made up of Robert Brown, Richards, Mark Green, Calvin
McClary Sr., Miller, Pat Fleming, Marco Thompson, Craig Hatcher, Barshan Holder and Gregg
King.
Just like the basketball team will miss Daniels, so too will the football team. He was the
quarterback and was certainly the catalyst for the offense. Kennedy said James Wilson and Lucas Peters
are doing battle for the quarterback slot.
Kennedy said the 7-on-7 scrimmages and tournaments provide young quarterbacks an
opportunity to learn and grow in regards to the passing game.
“They get to see a lot of different coverages,” Kennedy said. “They got to work on the ability to
trust their reads and work on their mechanics as a quarterback.”
While Kennedy obviously wants his quarterback to be able to throw the football consistently,
Manning’s offense will still revolve around its ability to run the football.
“We’ve got three of our five starters back on the offensive line. and we've got some good pieces
to fill in for the ones we lost last year,” Kennedy said. “And running back, that’s probably where we're
top-heavy at. We've got most of our running backs from last year, and we've got a few good ones from JV
(junior varsity).
“At the end of the day, we're going to run the football. and we're going to be able to stop the run,”
he added. “We think we've got some pieces where we can do those things.”
Manning will be working out of an odd defensive front this year after using an even front last
year because of graduated star defensive ends Monteque Rhames and Michael Brown.
“We changed our scheme up a little bit to fit the guys that we've got now,” Kennedy said. “This
year we've got some big bodies. We feel with some movement, e can do a pretty good job defensively.”
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