Nick Means runs for 291 yards and three touchdowns to lift Dorman over Sumter 48-35

         Sumter – Dorman High School football head coach Jake Morris knows one thing for sure: he’s happy to have running back Nick Means suiting up for his team.

    “He’s a heck of a player,” Morris said of the 5-foot-8-inch, 174-pound senior. “He’s a special kid to coach. He’s a great young man. He’s got a bright future ahead of him.”

It was on full display on Friday when the Cavaliers traveled from the Upstate to the Midlands to take on Sumter. Means carried the football 29 times for 291 yards and three touchdowns to help DHS to a 48-35 victory at Sumter Memorial Stadium to remain undefeated on the season.

    Dorman, ranked fourth in the latest High School Sports Report AAAAA poll, improved to 5-0. The Gamecocks dropped to 3-3.

    Means not only displayed his speed, but he also showed his ability to cut back or simply reverse his direction on several occasions, turning what was little or no gain into a solid pickup.

“The things he does out here, it’s just amazing to watch him play,” Morris said of Hicks, who had no lost yardage.

His biggest run of the night came early in the fourth quarter. Sumter had just tied the game at 28-28 on an 18-yard run by quarterback Franklin Richardson with 11:13 remaining in the game. A touchback on the kickoff had the Cavaliers starting at their 23-yard line. After a 3-yard run by Means, he took the handoff around left end and went 77 yards down the Dorman sideline for the score.

Sumter blocked the extra point, leaving the score at 34-28with 10:30 left. Any hint of momentum gained with the blocked kick was taken away when the Gamecocks couldn’t handle the ensuing kickoff with DHS’ Jayvion Long recovering at the SHS 12. Two plays later, Means scored on a 5-yard run and placekicker Will Cook’s extra point made it 41-28 with 9:44 to go.

Dorman took away any doubts on the outcome when quarterback Cooper Patterson connected with wide receiver Dai’Shion Watkins-Hynes for a 32-yard TD to make it 48-28 with 6:34 to go.

The Cavaliers completed the first half of the season with an unblemished record against a tough schedule. That included victories in relatively low-coring games against AAAAA No. 6 Byrnes, AAAA No. 1 Irmo and AAAA No. 2 Irmo.

“I feel great about where we are,” said Morris, who is in his fourth year in charge of his alma mater. “Anytime you come out of this tough of a non-region schedule undefeated it’s huge. I feel good about where we are, but we’re getting ready to go into the toughest region in the state.”

That would be Region 2-AAAAA, and it’s hard to argue with Morris’ assessment. DHS opens region play on October 2 at Fort Mill, which is unranked in the HSSR poll but is also unbeaten at 5-0. It then plays host to 4-1 Northwestern, which is the 2-time defending AAAAA Division II state champion and ranked fifth in AAAAA.

After that, Dorman plays consecutive road games against 5-0 and seventh-ranked Boiling Springs and second-ranked Rock Hill, which is 4-1 after suffering a 20-10 loss to Ridge View on Friday. It close at home against archrival and perennial power Spartanburg, which is 2-3.

“We’ve got a lot of football left to play, a lot of good teams left to play, but I feel good about where we’re at,” Morris said.

Along with Means, some of that may be due to the progress of Patterson, who is in his first year starting behind center. He completed 10 of 18 passes for 210 yards and three TDs.

“He’s getting better every week,” Morris said. “He’s a junior, first year starting, and he did a good job tonight. He made some good passes and did some good things.”

Watkins-Hymes caught four of the passes for 119 yards and two touchdowns. Anthony Peaks had two catches for 50 yards and the other TD reception. Means had three catches for 24 yards, giving him 315 yards of total offense.

One of the few downsides to DHS’ performance was the number of times it was penalized. It was flagged 22 times for 230 yards.

“We really haven’t had a problem with that,” Morris said. “Tonight was an anomaly. It’s something we’ve got to get corrected.”

    While the Cavaliers displayed a balanced offensive attack, SHS is pretty much totally reliant on the run. Sumter ran for 306 yards but had minus 11 yards passing despite completing three of four passes.

    Because of that, first-year Sumter head coach Drew Marlowe said that makes every penalty and mistake magnified when it puts his team in a second- or third-down-and-long situation.

    “The five touchdown drives we had we didn’t have any penalties,” said Marlowe, whose team was penalized eight times for 60 yards. “The four or five we didn’t, we had penalties. With our inability to push the ball downfield with the passing game, you can’t get penalties for jumping offsides. That has absolutely killed us the last three weeks.

“We’ve got to be more focused, we’ve got to be more disciplined on Monday through Wednesday if we want to execute at a high level on Friday. It’s a simple thing to say, but something that is harder to do.”

Leading the way for the SHS rushing attack was Reggie Shannon. He had 140 yards and three touchdowns on 16 carries. Richardson finished with 76 yards and a TD on 16 carries, Jamarion Witherspoon had 31 yards on 10 carries, and Cleveland Pinkney III had 27 yards and the other score on three carries.

Sumter has had terrible defensive performances the past two weeks, the other one coming against AAAAA No. 1 and 4-time defending state champion Dutch Fork in a 55-26 defeat.

“We’ve got to get better at our tackling, and just like on the offensive side of the ball, we’ve got to be disciplined and we’ve got to be where we’re supposed to be,” said Marlowe, who returned to coach his alma mater after leading South Florence to a pair of state championships and four straight AAAA championship games to close out his 6-year stint. “We can’t chase things we’re not supposed to chase. Most of their big runs didn’t go where the run was supposed to go. We stopped it there, and he cut it back, and there’s supposed to be a guy there and, the guy’s not there. Discipline is our issue, and we’ve got to fix it.

“I feel like we’re close. We’ve got to execute at a higher level, we’ve got to coach at a higher level. It’s our job as coaches to make sure the kids can execute. We’ve just got to keep working. Nobody wants to hear that right now, I don’t want to say that right now, but that’s the reality of where we are. We’ve got to keep working.”

    Sumter took the opening kickoff and went 81 yards in six plays. The big play of the drive was a 55-yard run by Shannon that helped set up his first touchdown from six yards out. Placekicker Connor Rivers added the extra point to make it 7-0 with 9:52 left in the first quarter.

    On Dorman’s first offensive play from its 20, Patterson mishandled the snap for a 14-yard loss. Means ran for eight yards before Sumter was penalized for being offsides to make it third and 11 from the 19. Patterson then connected with Means for a 16-yard gain and a first down at the 35.

    A 12-yard completion to Watkins-Hymes and a 26-yard run by Means set up a 27-yard TD run by Means. Cook’s PAT tied the game at 7-7 with 7:16 to go.

    The Cavaliers stopped Sumter on its next possession, forcing it to punt from its 14. Maleek Hyers came from the left side to block the punt, and Tylan Edwards jumped on the football in the end zone for a touchdown to make it 14-7 with 5:30 remaining in the first quarter.

    The Gamecocks tied the game on a 3-yard run by Shannon with 2:19 left. DHS regained the lead on a 6-yard run by Patterson with 10:57 to go in the second quarter to make it 21-14. That would be the halftime score.

    Dorman pushed the lead to 28-14 on a 44-yard TD pass from Patterson to Peaks less than a minute into the second half.

    Sumter made it 28-21 on a 16-yard run by Pinkney with 8:13 to go in the third quarter.