Category Archives: Sports
Pickens pummels Carolina during jamboree
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
EASLEY — For the Pickens Blue Flame, it was more disappointing than anything that they couldn’t take the field last week after the spectacular 28-0 showing they had against the Carolina High School Trojans at the Easley jamboree.
“It just sucks that we’re off for a week,” Pickens head coach Chad Smith said following the win at the Aug. 13 jamboree, which came
just hours after the School District of Pickens County announced extracurricular activities — including the Flame’s planned season opener against Liberty — were canceled for last week. “I think we’re ready to play, and hopefully we’ll come back and the kids will be in shape and just keep up the momentum.”
The new-look Blue Flame offense was unstoppable outside of a couple of fumbles, rushing for 162 yards and keeping the Trojans on their heels
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Liberty learns from jamboree loss
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
EASLEY — With a young team featuring nearly 20 freshmen and sophomores, the 2021 season is a rebuilding years in a lot of ways for the Liberty Red Devils, 
and the first step of that rebuild took place on Aug. 13 in the Red Devils’ 28-0 jamboree loss to Easley.
“We had 19 ninth- and 10th-graders out there tonight,” first-year Liberty head coach Paul Sutherland said. “We have four sophomores starting on the offensive
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Green Wave down Devils with balanced attack, smothering defense
By Eugene Jolley
Courier Sports
news@thepccourier.com
EASLEY — The Easley football team had a successful final preseason tuneup on Aug. 13, blanking county foe Liberty 28-0 in the
final half of the Easley jamboree.
Against the Devils, the Green Wave were clicking on all cylinders.
Liberty was bottled up on the first drive by end Joey Plummer and linebacker Noah Pierce.
After another defensive standoff, Easley drove 37 yards in four plays to go up 7-0. Quarterback A.J. Brown hit tight end Ethan Swann and receiver Chris Clemons to set up back Myles Martin’s 11-yard scoring run. Reeves Dacus’ kick made it 7-0 with 4:58 left in the first quarter.
Charlie Taylor, Pierce and Luke Peeples had big plays in the next series,
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Lions top Greenville in back-and-forth jamboree battle
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
CENTRAL — For 24 minutes at the Aug. 13 Easley jamboree, the state’s top-ranked Class 3A football team edged out one of the top teams in Class 4A, but with just six seconds left against the Greenville Red Raiders, the Daniel Lions’ win looked like it might turn
into a tie.
A 59-yard pass from Red Raider quarterback Prometheus Franklin III to Josh Sapp set Greenville up with one last shot at the end zone from the Lions’ 18. With the game on the line, Franklin went back to Sapp, only to have the pass broken up Daniel’s Misun Kelley to secure a 7-0 Lion win in the team’s final preseason tuneup before this Friday’s
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HS football season kickoff pushed back
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
COUNTY — The 2021 high school sports season was set to kick off
this week, however, after the School District of Pickens County’s decision to go virtual, fans of the four county high schools will have to wait another week to see their teams in action.
On Friday, the Pickens County School Board held an emergency meeting about the
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Senior-laden Blue Flame topple 5A foe TL Hanna
PICKENS — The Pickens High School Lady Blue Flame volleyball team, which features eight seniors, downed Class 5A powerhouse T.L. Hanna of Anderson last week in the friendly confines of Coach Peggy Harden Anthony Gymnasium on the Pickens High School campus.
It was the preseason opener for the Pickens squad.
The Aug. 13 scrimmage pitted two teams who played in their respective state championships last season. The Lady Blue Flame
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Pickens looking to build after disappointing finish in 2020
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
PICKENS — After Pickens’ thrilling win over Easley last season, the first for the Blue Flame against their county rival in a decade, Chad Smith’s squad seemed poised to be a contender in Region I-4A.
However, a disappointing stretch run kept the Blue Flame out of the playoffs for the second year in a row. One year later, Smith is hoping his team can learn from the mistakes of the 2020 squad.
“We just have to continue to be consistent,” Smith said. “In our postseason interviews, our upperclassmen said after they beat Easley, they pretty much relaxed
because their season was made, and you can’t do that. You have to keep plowing ahead. I think we kind of got that monkey off
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Devils hoping to bounce back in Sutherland’s first year
By Ryan Davenport
Special to the Courier
news@thepccourier.com
LIBERTY — A preseason scrimmage against Carolina High last week may have provided a solid snapshot of things to come for the Liberty High School Football program.
The Trojans were in control early, physically and statistically, but the young Red Devils kept plugging away. Not only did Liberty’s defense recover to pitch a
shutout, the offense eventually reached the end zone three times. Freshmen scored all three touchdowns.
The scrimmage exemplified the building blocks first-year head coach Paul Sutherland’s staff seek to make cornerstones of the program. The Red Devils showed fortitude that eventually allowed them to get the job done.
“We’re day by day right now — trying to get that culture that you show up to work every day on time and put in a good, hard, honest day’s work,” Sutherland
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Easley hoping to build on late-season momentum in year two under Durrah
By Eugene Jolley
Courier Sports
ejolley@thepccourier.com
EASLEY — The Easley football team will play the 2021 season with heavy hearts.
Junior defensive back Jordan Jenkins was killed in a car wreck early in the summer. Jenkins started two games as a sophomore and would have likely started
somewhere in the secondary.
“It’s been tough,” second-year Easley head coach Jordan Durrah said. “The biggest thing is the kids just want
to make him happy — to play hard on and off the field. They want to represent him on the field.”
Durrah said Jenkins was a likely starter.
Easley went 1-7 in the uncertain year that COVID-19 brought last season. The Green Wave beat Seneca convincingly in the season finale.
The Green Wave
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Lions begin title defense behind Pearman’s arm and stout defense
By Bru Nimmons
Staff Reporter
bnimmons@thepccourier.com
CENTRAL — While last year’s run to the Class 3A state championship represented the apex of a five-year climb to the top of the proverbial mountain, the 2021 Daniel Lions will have to deal with
all the added pressures that come with championship glory.
Luckily, the Lions don’t appear to be fazed by the added expectations, and just a year removed from its first state title since 1998, Daniel is not going to change the way that it approaches the game, according to sixth-year head coach Jeff Fruster.
“For us, it’s about starting over,” Fruster said. “What happened last year was great for the program and great for those seniors. They’ll always be remembered, but every team has its own identity, and right now we’re on a quest to figure out what our team identity is going to be this season. We want to build on the success we’ve built here and try to take it to the next step.”
The expectation remains the same this year, as it has for every year of Fruster’s tenure, and that sentiment is echoed by senior quarterback Trent Pearman.
“Always the same goal,” Pearman said. “We have to start by winning the first one, then keep going game by game all the way to the end.”
The Lions are also still dealing with the effects of COVID-19, as
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