High school football notebook: Nine Lewisville players suspended for Friday

The South Carolina High School League ruled nine Lewisville players will be suspended for Friday’s football game at Blacksburg.

Nine Lions players were ejected from last Friday night’s game against Chester for running on to the field after a scuffle broke out during the third quarter. A Cyclones player was also ejected for his role in the altercation, though no Chester players were tossed for running in from the sidelines.

Since Lewisville had the ball, most – not all – of its defensive starters were on the sidelines. Accordingly, eight of the nine suspended Friday would normally start on defense.

“We’ve been planning since Sunday,” said Lewisville coach Will Mitchell, who traveled to the High School League’s office Monday morning to discuss the incident. “You make a best case scenario and a worst case scenario. It’s unfortunate. We committed the violation, we broke the rule, we’ll take our punishment and we don’t have any issue with that.”

Here is video from the incident:

Provided no other incidents occur, Lewisville will dress out 28 players on Friday at Blacksburg, including nine freshman.

Correction: an earlier version of this story insinuated that the video was edited; it was not. The person shooting the video hits pause after every play, but in this instance restarted the video when he saw players running on to the field.

Strait Herron wins 50th career game, South Pointe wins 100th in program history

South Pointe’s 30-7 win over Nation Ford was coach Strait Herron’s 50th career victory in his fifth year as a head coach. It’s reasonable to assume that the second coach in Stallion history can surpass 60 this year; his current record is 50-9.

The victory was also the 100th in South Pointe’s 10-year program history. The Stallions have won 78 percent of their games, never lost in the first two rounds of the playoffs, held 51 of their opponents to less than 10 points, and won five region championships and three state titles.

Several other coaches could hit big, round numbered milestones this year. York coach Bobby Carroll – who won half of those games at South Pointe – has 93 career wins and should top 100 this fall. Northwestern coach Kyle Richardson has 44 wins and has a great shot to top 50 this year.

Freshmen make instant impact

Two freshmen, Northwestern’s Jamario Holley and Chester’s Pha’leak Brown, made quick impacts on the varsity level.

The 5-foot-10, 165-pound Holley caught four passes for 43 yards during the Trojans’ 40-31 loss to Byrnes, and played in key situations. The last Trojan to play varsity in the first game of his ninth grade season was Dupree Hart, who graduated last year as South Carolina’s all-time leading receiver.

Brown made five tackles from the defensive secondary but his biggest impact came on offense. The 5-foot-10, 170-pound freshman ran for 121 yards on just 10 carries, scoring a 5-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. Chester coach Victor Floyd mentioned Brown during preseason interviews and obviously has high hopes for the potential-packed freshman.

Morris out for the season

Wofford sophomore linebacker Terrance Morris, who starred at Chester, is out for the season after injuring his knee on the first day of contact practice. Morris was expected to have a big season for the Terriers; he was a preseason All-Southern Conference second team selection after making the league’s All-Freshman team last season.

“I felt a snap in my knee,” Morris told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal’s Todd Shanesy. “Normally when I get hurt, I just try to hop up and walk it off. But I knew I couldn’t walk this one off. I thought about all the bad things I’ve seen other players go through and thought it was probably the one for me. And it was.”

The verdict was a torn ACL.

“It makes you sick,” Wofford coach Mike Ayers told the Herald-Journal. “That’s going to happen in this game sometimes. You pray that it doesn’t. But sometimes it does.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 5:35 PM with the headline "High school football notebook: Nine Lewisville players suspended for Friday."