A State Steeped in History: High School Football in South Carolina

By JOE L. HUGHES II

Published: The Gaffney Ledger, Aug. 23, 2010

Little has changed about high school football in South Carolina through the decades, yet in towns from the Upstate to the Lowcountry people line up in droves hoping to get a view of their hometown team.

The state’s love for the gridiron was a subject John Boyanoski was quite acquainted with when he relocated to the Palmetto State from Scranton, Pa., to begin a new chapter in his journalism career. Yet, he wanted to delve further, find out more about what makes Friday nights under the lights such a time honored tradition in South Carolina.

“I had written two books and was wondering what should I do next,” Boyanoski said. “Then it hit me — I should look into South Carolina’s rich football tradition. After all, I always wanted to know where this all started, and where did this come from?”

An award-winning journalist who through the years has written for The Greenville News and the Spartanburg Herald- Journal, and contributed to the likes of the Associated Press and Sports Business Journal, Boyanoski tries to capture more than a century’s worth of history in his latest work, “High School Football in South Carolina: Palmetto Pigskin History.” The 208-page book jumps headfirst into the state’s tradition on the gridiron, getting state residents acquainted with Florence High School — sometimes dubbed the Yellow Jackets or the Golden Tornadoes — winners of the first four state football titles, a mark that has been tied, yet never broken.

He also discusses key events on and off the field, including the aftermath of a 1922 contest between teams from Columbia and Charleston in which fans from the state’s capital city sent their friends from the Lowcountry home with egg on their faces — literally. “After the game, violent Columbia fans hurled eggs at the Charleston train as the players left for home,” Boyanoski said.

The longtime journalist began his search for answers in Columbia, making several treks around the state to libraries, schools and sometimes homes in locales such as Charleston, Florence and Summerville, looking through any publication he could get his hands on, whether it be a newspaper or a yearbook stashed away in a high school’s media center.

“The biggest thing I wanted to do was chronicle some of the past stories and careers that make the state unique, and hunt down some of those stories and characters that somehow fell through the cracks due to the passing of time,” Boyanoski said. “I pulled from some of the major dailies covering particular areas of the state as well as publications serving communities looking for clues as to what that newspaper said about a certain year or era. I really wanted to go directly to the source and see what was being said in these local papers.”

While some would consider the current batch of athletes as the best era ever collected by the Palmetto State, Boyanoski begs to differ.

“Those that played in the early 1970s, the likes of Harry Carson and Mike O’ Cain, in my opinion that era has to top the list,” he said. “There have been many really talented eras, but when you break everything down, nothing compares to that era.”

According to the author, Carson’s case was quite intriguing.

“For a Pro Football Hall of Famer, you do not see too many articles or mentions of him in publications or for that matter the S.C. high school football history books,” Boyanoski said. “He wasn’t a superstar in high school, and did not play in either the Shrine Bowl or the North — South (All-Star) game. Yet, he went on to have one of the more dazzling careers in NFL history, and was recognized by being inducted into the hall of fame.”

A number of names recognized by the masses also turn up in the book, including Cale Yarbrough, the NASCAR legend who was once a standout at Timmonsville High School; former chairman of Augusta National Golf Club Hootie Johnson, who earned a football scholarship at the University of South Carolina due to his performance on the gridiron at Greenwood High in the late 1940s; and Anderson’s Jim Rice, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, now a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Of course, Gaffney makes quite a few appearances in the book, according to Boyanoski.

“According to some research I conducted, when Gaffney won its first state football championship in the 1920s, an estimated 5,000 people waited into the wee hours of the morning at train station awaiting the team’s return from Columbia. ... Gaffney’s been a football power for forever and a day, the fans are so in love with the Indians and how they perform on the field,” he said.

The book, which was published by History Press, also contains all-time win-loss records for schools, in addition to the state’s long line of All-State performers on the gridiron. It is currently available at www.historypress.net for $19.99.