Proud Of The HSSR Team For Producing Our 39th Special Football Issue For SC!
Senior Writer David Shelton, HSSR Publisher Billy Baker, & hssr.com Associate Editor Dennis Brunson, collectively represent 136 years of writing about high school sports in SC!
Proud Of The HSSR Team For Producing Our 39th Special Football Issue For SC!
Moncks Corner — As the HSSR begins our 39th season of being the only statewide publication and its companion website (hssr.com), covering all varsity sports on a statewide basis in South Carolina, please know that we remain committed to doing the very best job we possibly can; pretty much on a dollar-in & dollar-out basis.
Trust me, this 104-page annual football tabloid did not research itself. It was a team- oriented endeavor. We literally chased down head football coaches at the annual Coaches Clinic in Greenville, in late July, to get football team information forms filled out, and returned to us in same day, real time. Our senior writer, David Shelton, and myself, moved from our paid booth in the vending hall, to a table just outside the football meeting room for three straight days!
We thank, and appreciate very much, the head football coaches who took the time to either fill out the information forms at the Coaches Clinic, or to those who responded to our e mails, with the form attached, starting in early summer. Without the co-operation of the head football coaches it would be impossible to have a football issue packed with the information one can read in these 104 pages of content.
Our goal has been to remain positive the vast majority of the time. However, there were 8 to 10 head football coaches who left the rules clinic, (at the conclusion of the clinic) who accepted the team information form being handed to them; promised to return it to us via e mail in a few days, and in all honesty, no information was ever made available to us.
If I were a parent of hard-working football players, or if I was a hard-working football player, and I knew my coach, or the coach of my son, had thrown the HSSR team information form in the thrash after promising to return it, I would be very upset. If you are a head football coach, and did not respond to one of our many e mails over the summer, or if you just happened to be one of those head coaches who got a form at the clinic, and never returned it to us, please do so at this time to hsreport@aol.com. We would like to have it on file none-the-less.
We would also like to thank our team of professional writers for their extra effort on this issue and their years of writing experience will be noted also. David Shelton (39 years), Dennis Brunson (42 years), Gerald Doolittle (60 years!), Rob Grant (25 years), Roger Lee (25-plus), Neill Kirkpatrick (30 years), and Worthy Evans (29 years). Thanks to our network of writers for a very good job once again.
(Might as well throw this 71-year-old road warrior in the mix also. It was my honor to be paid for my first article on the Summerville Green Wave in the local weekly newspaper in 1970. Doing the math, put me down for 55 years!)
We need to also thank our Photo Editor Larry Gamble and his wife Edith Gamble who came to the HSSR media day at the University of South Carolina’s indoor practice facility in July where he helped shoot nearly 200 pictures of football players and head coaches. Eric Owens came down from Rock Hill and helped shoot pictures as well.
Special thanks to USC head football coach Shane Beamer and Director of Football Operations George Wynn for allowing the HSSR to use a centrally located venue, protected from the weather, for our picture shoot.
In closing, the HSSR extends best wishes to all the 255 public and private schools in SC who are fielding varsity football team this season. We have not ever counted the number of athletes names that we bold on first mention in each and every issue, but a calculated guess is at least 2,500 prep football players are named in this issue, especially when you factor in all the players mentioned in the region previews.
Should you be an athletic director, Principal, Booster Club President, or just a caring parent reading this issue, it might be an ideal time to call me personally (843-200-9555) and find out how your varsity sports teams, at your school, can become a year-round sponsored school in the 2025-26 school year. A list of sponsored schools can be found on page 71 of this issue.
I was really humbled when a softball parent called me in early June to thank the HSSR for our softball coverage. A college made contact with his daughter after reading about the three home runs, she hit in one game! That college coach told the father they read about her rare accomplishment in “The High School Sports Report.”
When consideration is made for year- round coverage of all your varsity teams for one full year, you should factor in the fact that your teams receive coverage both in print, and also articles are placed on the world wide web at hssr.com. Search engines like Google (and they love free content) pick up our stories without fail and help the HSSR sponsored schools get worldwide coverage also!
Our web site is free so a proud grandparent living anywhere in the world can follow the progress of their grandchildren without hitting a pay-wall. College coaches go online at hssr,com and read about South Carolina athletes all the time.
Ask yourself this question: What other media in South Carolina places the entire contents of their monthly publication on the world wide web for free? Let me know when a daily paper uploads their entire newspaper online without a pay-wall. (Never!)
Think about it like this: when a school’s athletic program becomes a year-round sponsored school in the HSSR, your student athlete’s hard work is plugged into our vast network for one full year! Your school, once sponsored in the print edition, then gets worldwide recognition for free at hssr.com for one full year! Like it was stated in the opening paragraph; “Dollar in and dollar-out!”
Finally, we must thank our sponsors for making our coverage possible in the first place. We have survived for 39 years, through thick and thin, because of several hundred core sponsors who have renewed their yearly sponsor support for 30, or more years!!
“To them we say, God is good, all the time!”
