Lake City disappointed with 1-5 start

By Dennis Brunson

hssr.com Associate Editor

Lake City – Lake City High School football head coach Jamison Estep understands the adage, “You are what your record says you are.” Still, he would beg to differ just a little bit.

“We’re 1-5, but we could easily be 5-1 with a play here and a play there,” said Estep, who is in his second season as acting head coach due to major injuries suffered by head coach Ronnie Baker in an automobile accident. “We’ve really been self-sabotaging.”

Estep had to look back no further than the Panthers’ 16-14 home loss to Kingstree played in a downpour on September 26.

“We thought we had a game-winning touchdown but it was taken away on a holding call,” he said. “We keep tripping our own selves up.”

The only blowout loss for AA LCHS was a 41-6 defeat to AAAA May River. Lake City lost to AAAAA Myrtle Beach 21-6, Class A Lamar 21-14 and Region 7-AA foe East Clarendon 28-12 and Kingstree, another region foe.

The most points the Panthers have scored came in their only victory, 28-26 over AA Timberland.

“We’re disappointed definitely, frustrated,” Estep said. “The kids have, talent, have the ability. It just seems we take one step forward, another step back. We can’t get out of own way at times.”

LCHS is averaging just over 200 yards of total offense a game. Quarterback Amari Hanna has completed 55 of 97 passes for 710 yards and five touchdowns. Blayne Edwards has all of the touchdown catches on 17 overall catches for 397 yards, an average of 23.4 yards per catch.

Fernandez Witherspoon has 12 catches for 141 yards, and Treshon Burgess had 13 catches for 75 yards.

Lake City is averaging less than 100 rushing yards a game. Raheem McCray had 165 yards and a TD on 23 carries. Hanna had 139 yards and four scores on 30 carries.

Estep said the Panthers have to get better in the trenches if they hope to make a run into the playoffs.

“It starts up front,” he said. “You win and lose with the bigs. We’ve got to get better on both sides of the ball. We’ve got to clean up some minor details. We’ve got to be able to finish. In five of the first six weeks, we just didn’t finish.”

Shayon Shavers led Lake City in tackles with 20 through six games. Hunter Blanchard had two tackles for loss, a quarterback sack, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. Kenjae Burgess had 15 tackles, one TFL, forced a fumble and recovered a fumble.