Flashback to 1998: Fort Mill’s playoff run

It had to be the most beautiful thing ever to come off of Shaun Germain’s foot.

I heard it on a sticky August night, a little past halfway through two teams bludgeoning each other with little to show for it. I never saw it. Not until it was high above me, sailing from 37 yards out and splitting the field house uprights at what has since been named Bob Jones Stadium.

“That was my first varsity kick,” said Germain, now in real estate just outside Washington, D.C.

It was all we needed. Those were the only three points scored in a season opening win against a Northwestern team that wouldn’t lose again until the 4A state playoffs. We nearly floated across darkened practice fields back to our locker room, someone shouting, “the final score was...we won!”

It was 1998, the last year Fort Mill High hosted a playoff game. On Friday night we get another, as the Yellow Jackets take on Dorman. I hate to admit how long it’s been. If our playoff team were a pregnant lady, we’d have our own high-schooler by now. And when we sat him down and told him how things used to be in our day, we’d start right there on Germain’s instep.

“Our kids believed they could play with anyone at that point,” said then-head coach Greg Thomas.

Now before you Falcon fans get your tailfeathers in a bunch, remember we’re talking about a different era. Plenty of us, myself included, would’ve gone to Nation Ford High had it existed. That fall, it didn’t matter if you came from Tega Cay, Paradise or the woods halfway to Indian Land. We all stood for the same alma mater.

“Every member of that team, coaching staff was in a brotherhood,” said Cory Broom, a junior defensive lineman on that 1998 team now married with three kids in Myrtle Beach.

“We would of went to war for each other.”

Instead, we went to Chesterfield. A 30-6 win there and a 17-10 home win against Lancaster put us 3-0 with two wins against 4A schools. Back then the only high school in town was 3A. We had 33 players turn out for the team and just 4,860 students in the whole district that year.

“The mindset is a lot different,” said senior defensive back Matt McAteer, who now coaches ninth-graders at Fort Mill, now on a full 4A schedule. “You know you’re going to play those teams.”

The link between our team and the current one, McAteer sees similarities in senior and skill position leadership. The current team rolled offensively as the defense gained steam during the season, one difference McAteer sees.

“It’s kind of the opposite,” he said. “That (’98) team, we were known for our defense. It’s a mirror image.”

The image we saw in our first region game that year was an imposing one. Fairfield-Central hadn’t lost but a game in more than two years. They were two-time defending 3A champs, and they were home. We got ready for the game in a mobile classroom. That’s the night I learned, winning travels; We had carpools of students driving to Columbia. The game hinged on a fumble we recovered and took to the house.

Problem was, the official didn’t see it that way. We scored late to force overtime, but lost 14-7.

The next week we lost again at Union, 21-7. Union had a good team. They weren’t two touchdowns better. Defensive coordinator Steve Gribble led a little conversation after the game in the back corner of the endzone. The gist of it was, it was time to choose whether we’d allow another loss. We walked off the field, unanimous.

“This just makes the remainder of the games that much more important,” Thomas told the newspaper man after the game. “It’s almost a must-win situation for us now.”

Then came the stretch where, if Disney filmed a movie about us, they’d dial up the music and highlight montage us straight-up smoking folks.

We put down region opponents Keenan, Clover and A.C. Flora by a combined 141-0. I want to say all three games were homecomings, Keenan being ours. The newspaper credited all-everything running back Omar Morrison’s 226 rushing yards and five touchdowns against Keenan to a “perfect performance” by the offensive line. Just saying.

York took one on the chin 35-7. We beat Chester 26-7 to end region play 5-2, good for third place. All three teams made the Upper State semifinals.

The playoffs

Legend has it Tom Neal scored the first touchdown in a new Fort Mill High stadium so long ago, it’s now a golf course driving range. Neal coached defensive linemen in ’98. I asked him over a burger last week what came to mind about that team.

“We should have won that game,” Neal said.

Anyone associated with the ’98 squad knows what game he meant. For everything that Northwestern win was, the third round playoff loss at Daniel was in the opposite direction. Some still won’t talk about it. A 13-7 loss where we scored the only offensive touchdown.

An interception return touchdown for them, a field goal that went through our best player rather than him blocking it and racing for a score – plays that could’ve put our team alongside the marching band on all the green signs heading into town.

Daniel won state that year, never by a closer margin in those playoffs than our game.

The playoff game people gladly talk about is the second round game at Region II champ Greer. They lockered us in a water tower to wait for snow. We came home with a 46-14 win, bus radio set to scores from around the state, the Daniel coach talking up our team.

“Rumored that the Greer game announcer was chalking up a Fort Mill loss while we were getting dressed for the playoff game,” Broom said. “We ran them out of the stadium.”

Our lone home playoff game, the last in town until Friday, is almost a footnote. Seneca coach Tom Bass was retiring after 20 years at the school and 14 at Clemson University. An early pass to the flats fell to the ground, was ruled a lateral and scooped for a return score for Seneca.

I can’t speak for everyone, but at that point I wondered if the moment wasn’t just a little too big for us. It wasn’t.

Germain hit a 42-yard field goal in the second quarter, another in the third. Junior quarterback Jason Therrell, a bowling ball who threw it just often enough so we wouldn’t make him play fullback, ran one in from seven yards in the second quarter.

“Favorite play would probably have to be me running over someone,” said Therrell, a soon-to-be-married financial analyst still in Fort Mill.

We scored three rushing touchdowns in the second half for a 34-7 win. Morrison had 237 rushing yards with a score. I had no rushing yards, but dove on a fumble in the endzone that counted for a touchdown. Dantrell Jackson scored the other.

A team game

McAteer, listed in the program as 5-foot-9-inches tall and 160 pounds in ’98, sees so many multiple set formations, speed concepts and spread offense schemes that he almost wouldn’t recognize the game we played by the game today.

“If football was played then like it is now, a guy like me probably never would have seen the field,” he said.

But, he and others agree, the same keys to success remain.

“Kids really are the same since day one,” Thomas said. “And football, there’s only one way to be any good at it, and that’s through hard work and commitment.”

Thomas left after the 1998 season. He won four North Carolina state championships the next eight years, then moved to Florida where playoffs start this week after his latest conference championship.

He and offensive line coach Addison Kendrick – one of the scariest humans I ever respected, who’d hang clean 225 pounds with one arm just to prove offensive tackle Chris Barnett wrong – still talk about their time coaching in Fort Mill.

“It was just a group that played together and worked together,” Thomas said. “They did all the things it takes to be a champion.”

Nobody knows what will happen Friday night. The same way nobody on that ’98 team knew we’d produce a minister, a beer distributor, a former NASCAR pit crew member, a cop who pulled my mother over for speeding through town, a reporter, and who knows what all else.

What the older of the two teams does know is how important it is to enjoy the ride while it lasts – pushing SUVs all summer around the school parking lot, having team moms feed us every Thursday night, wearing jerseys to school on Fridays.

McAteer’s ninth grade season is over, so he’s helping with the varsity level coaches now. His mantra is that every game is the biggest his players ever will play. That’s how he wants them to prepare. He may not have a hard time convincing them this week.

“Why is it the biggest game of your life?” McAteer said. “Because it’s the next game.”

A tale of teams

This story was originally published November 11, 2014 at 10:38 AM with the headline "Flashback to 1998: Fort Mill’s playoff run."