A clear sky. Low near 40F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph..
A clear sky. Low near 40F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph.
Updated: December 31, 2024 @ 3:47 pm
Barnwell’s Jaquan Peeples (1) reacts after returning a kickoff for a touchdown against Clinton during the Class AA state championship.
Dwayne Garrick stepped down as Aiken High’s head football coach before what would have been his 27th season as a head coach in the South Carolina High School League.
Family members of James Dawsey and local dignitaries were on hand as South Aiken dedicated its stadium in his name.
Midland Valley’s Traevon Dunbar, seated second from left, with, from left, sister Taleyah, mother Tonya and sister Tekinia, puts on a West Virginia hat after signing to play football for the Mountaineers.
Gary Asbill, a former USC Aiken assistant and Aiken High head coach, is now the head coach at South Aiken.
Strom Thurmond’s Cody Davenport (12) was named to the Class AA All-State baseball team.
The Gregg Park Rookie All-Stars were special guests for Thursday’s American Legion Junior AA state championship at Midland Valley.
Aiken Standard sports editor
Kyle Dawson is the sports editor of the Aiken Standard. Contact him at kdawson@aikenstandard.com.
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Barnwell’s Jaquan Peeples (1) reacts after returning a kickoff for a touchdown against Clinton during the Class AA state championship.
Dwayne Garrick stepped down as Aiken High’s head football coach before what would have been his 27th season as a head coach in the South Carolina High School League.
Family members of James Dawsey and local dignitaries were on hand as South Aiken dedicated its stadium in his name.
Midland Valley’s Traevon Dunbar, seated second from left, with, from left, sister Taleyah, mother Tonya and sister Tekinia, puts on a West Virginia hat after signing to play football for the Mountaineers.
Gary Asbill, a former USC Aiken assistant and Aiken High head coach, is now the head coach at South Aiken.
Strom Thurmond’s Cody Davenport (12) was named to the Class AA All-State baseball team.
The Gregg Park Rookie All-Stars were special guests for Thursday’s American Legion Junior AA state championship at Midland Valley.
The Aiken Standard coverage area was host to no shortage of big news on the local sports scene in 2024, as the area’s athletes, teams, coaches and venues kept fans and readers talking from the first page of the calendar to the last.
The stories that follow were the ones that drew in more eyes than any of the others. Here are the 10 most-read local sports stories we covered this year, as determined by a yearlong analysis of our web metrics. The race to top next year’s list begins Jan. 1.
Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs? As it turns out, yes, the annual reveal of high school football’s playoff brackets topped the charts in 2024. It was a postseason that started late, after Hurricane Helene wiped out games in the area and forced local schools to play catch-up once the SCHSL added only one extra week to the regular season. Earning top seeds in the playoffs were region champions North Augusta (4-AAAA), Barnwell (5-AA) to lead 10 area schools that made the postseason, and those two were also the ones who stuck around the longest – Barnwell played for the Class AA title while North Augusta reached the Class AAAA semifinals. The brackets featured several first-time matchups for area teams, as they faced opponents from elsewhere in the state that either were previously in different classifications or on opposite sides of the bracket. Speaking of which…
Ah yes, realignment. It’s something that always introduces debate, especially this year after the SCHSL introduced a multiplier to apply to students enrolled from outside of a particular school’s attendance zone in an attempt to combat competitive imbalance. That led to the formation of Class AAAA’s largest region, which still contains Aiken, Airport, Midland Valley, North Augusta and South Aiken and also added Brookland-Cayce, Gilbert and Gray Collegiate Academy. It also boosted Fox Creek and Silver Bluff up a classification to Class AAA, and while Barnwell and Strom Thurmond remained in Class AA they were put with almost entirely-new groups in their respective regions. Blackville-Hilda, Ridge Spring-Monetta, Wagener-Salley and Williston-Elko all stayed together in the new Region 3-A, which lost Denmark-Olar to the Lower State.
There was a lot of moving and shaking in the coaching ranks this year, but this was the most talked-about move. Garrick came to Aiken High last season from Barnwell as one of the most successful coaches to ever come through the area, with 200 career wins, 11 double-digit win seasons, 10 state semifinal appearances, five state championship game appearances and one title. Those numbers didn’t change after an 0-10 campaign, and there wouldn’t be a second. Garrick’s retirement was abruptly announced by Aiken High in late July, in a move athletic director Phillip Blacha said was at least partly caused by the district’s lack of athletic trainers. Longtime Garrick assistant Heath Corley took over and led the Hornets to a 1-9 season (a loss to Gray Collegiate became a win by forfeit after the War Eagles were found to have used an ineligible player), and now the program that long ago was called the “Graveyard of coaches” is on the hunt for its sixth in the last decade. Garrick returned to Barnwell as an assistant coach.
South Aiken football’s season opener was an eventful one to kick off the 2024 campaign. The T-Breds showed toughness they felt they lacked all season in a 35-18 win over Silver Bluff, during which all-time leading rusher Jevon Edwards ran for 303 yards and four touchdowns to also take over the top spot on the program’s career rushing touchdowns list – he then spent the rest of the season putting those records well out of reach. It was at halftime, though, that South Aiken honored another one of the program’s key figures. James A. Dawsey was the school’s first principal when it opened for the 1980-81 school year, and by the time he retired following the 1994-95 school year the school had undergone widescale changes. One that was missing was a home stadium for football, soccer and track and field, and he was invited back as a special guest when it finally opened in 2000. It now bears his name, with the school dedicating the newly-named James A. Dawsey Memorial Stadium to begin the T-Breds’ 25th season on their home field.
Maybe Scottie Scheffler’s four-shot victory for his second green jacket was just too ho-hum, but the most-read story from the 2024 Masters – in the Non-Gnome Division, obviously – was about the members of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league making an early splash but failing to finish inside the top five on the final leaderboard. Of course, one of those players, Bryson DeChambeau, has been one of the game’s most talked-about players, for reasons both good and bad, for years. He stormed out to the 18-hole lead and then shared it at the midway point with Scheffler and Max Homa before fading on the weekend and tying for sixth along with Cameron Smith as LIV’s top finishers. DeChambeau turned out to have an OK year, though, which included a U.S. Open title. Tyrrell Hatton tied for ninth, 2016 champion Patrick Reed tied for 12th and, in the biggest surprise of them all, defending champion Jon Rahm never sniffed the front page of the leaderboard and finished in a tie for 45th.
College signing stories are always fun ones to write, because area student-athletes are literally seeing their dreams come true. A combined story of all of the local signees from this past year would easily top this list, thanks in large part to the buzz surrounding Midland Valley running back Traevon Dunbar. Dunbar became only the second player in SCHSL history to reach 3,000 rushing yards in a season while leading the Mustangs to a 12-1 season that included a region championship, a trip to the third round of the Class AAAA playoffs and their first win over North Augusta since 1998. He finished his high school career, which was split between Silver Bluff and Midland Valley, with 6,410 yards and 92 touchdowns on 628 carries. Those would be eye-popping numbers for any back that played four full seasons, but Dunbar only played two – his freshman year was shortened by COVID-19 cancellations, as was his junior year as he recovered from a knee injury. He committed to West Virginia last December and signed in January, and a couple of weeks later eight more Mustangs signed to play college football.
Everything came full-circle for Gary Asbill back in May when he was named head baseball coach of the South Aiken program that gave him his start as a coach in 2011 under now-athletic director Bob Polewski. Asbill came back to South Aiken from his alma mater, having served as an assistant under Michael Holder at USC Aiken. Before that, he was Aiken High’s head coach for three seasons. Now he’s back where it all began, taking over a program that had been coached by Michael Baker, who is now at Silver Bluff, for the previous seven seasons. Asbill saw in South Aiken a team with plenty of young talent returning after a season where the record didn’t necessarily reflect the effort, and he knows firsthand what it looks like when a South Aiken program is clicking – and he’s hopeful to help return the program to prominence.
As mentioned above, it was Barnwell that had the longest football season – in the best way possible – of all of the area schools, reaching the Class AA championship game. The Warhorses, with Class AA Lower State Coach of the Year Brian Smith and Offensive Player of the Year in quarterback Cameron Austin leading the way, rode a 10-game winning streak into the state finals before ultimately falling to Clinton. The biggest nailbiter along the way came in the third round against Cheraw in a game that had just about everything. The Warhorses ran the two-minute drill to perfection to score to go-ahead touchdown with 34 seconds, then held on for dear life as Cheraw completed a long pass on the last play of the game – with the receiver falling out of bounds a yard short of scoring the game-winner. The biggest plays of the night, no doubt, yet statewide attention went to a different play – sophomore Damahjai Devoe’s interception return for a touchdown in the final minute of the first half to turn a six-point deficit into a one-point lead. Grainy cell phone video shot from the stands made the rounds of social media almost instantly, and fans from all over argued whether the ball hit the ground first or if it bounced off the gloves of a diving receiver. Smith got a look at the Warhorses’ official game film and said it was clearly a tipped ball, plus Cheraw’s coaches didn’t protest despite the play happening right in front of their sideline. The main lesson to take away from this one, kids – play until the whistle. Devoe did, and Barnwell had the last laugh.
Like signing stories, ones about various awards and honors are also a lot of fun, aside from the occasional snub. Six local baseball players were named All-State in their respective classifications after another big year on the diamond in the area, and each had huge dual-threat seasons to lead their teams. North Augusta’s Jaxon Jean was picked for the Class AAAA team after leading the Jackets to a second-place finish in Region 4-AAAA. Fox Creek’s Bradley Anderson led the Predators to the Region 3-AA title and made the Class AA team, where he was joined by a fellow Player of the Year and region champion in Barnwell’s Cameron Austin and Cody Davenport of Region 3-AA runner-up Strom Thurmond, which along with Fox Creek reached the Upper State tournament as a district champion. Williston-Elko, which earned its third consecutive region championship, had a pair of representatives on the Class A team. Ben Jenkins and Peyton Rimes both made the team for the second year in a row.
The little guys from Gregg Park were rolling, indeed, as the 6-and-under All-Stars romped to victory after victory at the Diamond Youth Baseball D1 Rookie League championship in West Columbia. Then came a stunning setback to the Midlands Rookie Ball All-Stars to put their backs against the wall, only for them to bounce back to beat the same team to earn a shot at a state title. A 7-3 lead over Hartsville Northern quickly became an 11-7 deficit, requiring one final rally from a team that really hadn’t needed to make any up to that point. Head coach Ross Sullivan’s boys gave him exactly that, though, and with the game tied at 11 with two outs in the final inning he had exactly who he wanted in the batter’s box – his son, Bryant. Bryant ripped a walk-off double to send Gregg Park to the World Series, where they made it all the way to the championship series before falling in the final game.
Aiken Standard sports editor
Kyle Dawson is the sports editor of the Aiken Standard. Contact him at kdawson@aikenstandard.com.
To support local journalism, sign up for a subscription. See our current offers »
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