South Pointe and Hartsville meet in 2014 state championship rematch
South Pointe and Hartsville’s first meeting of the 2016 South Carolina high school football championship week came Monday morning at a rectangular table in front of a bunch of media members.
The two teams’ lone previous meeting, in the 2014 3A title game, quickly surfaced.
As a reporter tried to dance around the topic of South Pointe smothering the previously undefeated Red Foxes in a 21-7 win, Hartsville coach Jeff Calabrese cut to the chase.
“You can say it, they absolutely destroyed us. Yes, I remember,” he said, as chuckles spread through the room. “I appreciate you, you’re doing well over there. You did your homework.”
Highlights from South Pointe’s 2014 3A state championship win over Hartsville:
A big week of preparation lies ahead if Strait Herron’s South Pointe team is to replicate what it did two years ago, holding a vaunted Hartsville rushing attack under 100 yards.
“They’re still great, they’re just slightly different,” Calabrese said. “Man, they get 11 hats to the football. They pursue. Subtle differences may be there, but they’re still a great defense. What we’ve got to do, I can’t share that because coach Herron is sitting right next to me.”
But while the names on the jerseys and school mascots and head coaches are the same as two years ago, the actors on the field will mostly be different. Each team has one or two players that started in 2014 and between 15 and 20 that were there but didn’t contribute much, if any.
“That year’s over and this is a whole different season, a totally different game” said Herron, seated next to the championship trophy. “One of the main things I notice about them now is they can throw the football. That brings a whole new element to what we had to deal with last time.
“It’ll be a different game, a whole different way of game-planning.”
One of the conscious efforts we made after ‘14 was to be able to throw the ball. I think we are a little more diverse than when we came into the game two years ago, but again, that was probably a lesson they taught us.
Hartsville coach Jeff Calabrese
on one of the things he took away from his team’s loss to South Pointe in the 2014 3A state championship game.Calabrese admitted that the defensive job South Pointe did on his Red Foxes convinced him and his coaching staff to bolster its passing game. Hartsville has more of an aerial threat than at least the 2014 team, if not any of Calabrese’s 12 teams at the school.
“Any time you play each other you learn something,” he said. “It was the first time I’d played coach Herron and his staff and certainly we had a lot to learn.”
One thing that doesn’t have to be learned in Hartsville or Rock Hill is how to win. South Pointe - winners of consecutive championships in the 3A classification - will play for its third state title Saturday, and fifth overall. Hartsville is also chasing its fifth championship and is playing in its 10th final.
Calabrese’s team has ruthlessly smashed four playoff opponents to the tune of a 36.3-point margin of victory. South Pointe has showed guts to overcome slow starts each of the last two weeks, especially last Friday against South Aiken in which the Stallions twice overturned 14-point margins. Two different styles, two different towns, but one commonality helped Hartsville and South Pointe reach Saturday’s championship game.
“It’s a culture from top to bottom,” said Herron. “We want to produce winners.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 4:08 PM with the headline "South Pointe and Hartsville meet in 2014 state championship rematch."