The HSSR Salutes All SCHSL & SCISA Football Champions From 2024 Season!

  Billy G. Baker

  Publisher

Moncks Corner — With the football season extended into mid-December, due to the effects of Hurricane Helene, this issue of The High School Sports Report  wraps up the 2024 football season in South Carolina, with detailed coverage of both the SCISA and SCHSL football championship games, played at Charleston Southern University and South Carolina State University in mid-November and mid-December respectively.

The HSSR salutes all the teams who survived the highly competitive play-off process to advance to the finals. In SCHSL action, Dutch Fork won the Div. I AAAAA state title over Summerville, Northwestern won a thrilling Div. II AAAAA win over Irmo on a last second field goal. South Florence won a highly competitive game over Westside in AAAA that was a rematch of their title game from a year ago.

In AAA, Oceanside Collegiate moved up from AA and defeated Belton-Honea Path for the AAA crown. In the first game of the championships on December, 12 Clinton defeated Barnwell to claim the AA title. In Class A action Abbeville defeated Cross to win their 13^th state title since 1981.

In SCISA action, Hammond just keeps on winning with a victory over Porter-Gaud in AAAA action. In AAA, Pinewood Prep defeated Wilson Hall in a highly competitive game, In SCISA AA Pee Dee Academy won over Bethesda Academy and in SCISA Class  A Thomas Heyward defeated Williamsburg Academy.

In SCISA 8-man action Richard Winn defeated Laurens Academy is a state final game played at WW King Academy.

Once again, the HSSR salutes all these teams for the commitment and dedication it took to reach a state finals at all levels of the SCHSL and SCISA.

The HSSR had hoped to be able to announce our 2024 all-state football team in this issue but many all-state forms were still being e-mailed in form coaches as we were going to press. We will announcing our all-state football teams, along with Players & Coaches of the Year by mid-January at hssr.com.

We would love to have an all-state football banquet once again but the last banquet we had in February, 2020 required $35,000 in sponsorships and we had 1,100 people at Seawell’s for that event. Due to the Pandemic, our awards company shut-down their wholesale manufacturing plant and they only sell awards “retail” now. The meals that were around $20 four years ago or now over $25 per person. It would now take nearly $50,000 to put on the type banquets the HSSR hosted for 34 straight years.

Feeling generous, and needing a tax deduction  call me at 843-200-9555!

Now here are several other reasons the HSSR is three weeks off our normal print schedule. Early in the week of the SCHSL state football finals, our senior writer David Shelton had a heart attack and tests indicated he had a major blockage in his heart along with two other minor blockages.

Needless to say, this was a very serious medical situation and David under- went surgery missing games in the state finals for the first time in over 35 years. Thank God his surgery went fine and he was staying with his daughter after he left the hospital and then he had major kidney issues just a few days after coming home and he went back to the hospital for more tests.

David thought he would be able to write some stories in this issue until he had the problems with his kidneys. This could be the only issue ever printed by the HSSR missing his by-line on a lot of stories. We are all praying for David’s swift recovery for sure.  

Around the same time, Worthy Evans, one n of our part-time writer’s form Columbia, lost his mother to a long-term illness. It was about this time the HSSR understood that getting an issue printed prior to Christmas would be difficult and then our printer informed us that they were shutting down starting on December, 22^nd for the holidays!

The situation gets even worse. Early in the deadline for this issue one of our veteran writers, Neill Kirkpatrick informed me that is mother had a stroke. She had been in for health for some time and sadly passed away a few days later.

Honesty, I am writing this column 24 hours before we do to press on Monday morning in Dillon SC I I do not know how many of David’s 25 stories, or how many of Neill’s 10 assigned stories will be updated in this issue. We are trying our best to have new articles for all schools but with the school’s being out for the holidays it has bene challenging to get some coaches on the phone. 

We hope that everyone is understanding of a rare set of unfortunate circumstances that have confronted the HSSR at this time.

Our next issue, printed in early February, should be more current and up-to-date and contain a lot of basketball and wrestling articles.

In the mean time we are wishing everyone a HAPPY New Year!