By Monte Dutton

Greetings, nice people. I’m still here. Spring is winter on the Furman landscape.

Anna Morgan was the first-round leader in district women’s golf. Riley Ludlam is the SoCon softball Player of the Year. The runners win far and wide. Men’s basketball signed a 6-10 recruit out of Woodbridge, Va., by way of Wichita, Kan. The versatility and academic soundness of Furman student-athletes is a proven, statistically vetted, reality. Timmons Arena is growing ever nearer to becoming another Timmons Arena.

Oh, and Bob Richey gave the commencement address at his alma mater, nearby North Greenville, and based on watching the video, he was about as prepared for his alma mater as all season at courtside. That man does nothing halfway.

Stanford Jennings is in the state football half of fame! It gets to me deep inside. What a player. What a man. Want a weird comparison? Stanford reminds me of Jeff Gordon. In 20 years of wasting my life on stock car racing, I came to know Gordon as honest, reliable, tactful and thoughtful. That’s exactly how I see Stanford.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be peddling my novels and chipping away at another. If all goes well, I may write a song called “The Ballad of Tyler Huff,” or “The Ballad of Tommy Spangler,” or “The Ballad of Tyler Huff and Tommy Spangler,” because that tune hits the imaginary charts of Laurens and Greenville counties, which define my modest current expertise.

Spring without baseball is all April with showers and no May with flowers.

Fortunately, by the grace of Willie Mays, baseball is quite significant here in Laurens County, where Presbyterian College fields a team and the public high schools are both, at the moment, rampaging through their respective playoffs.

If man is going to languish about his alma mater, I recommend basking in the glow of a glorious men’s basketball season and longing , how-do-I-love-thee, let-me-count-the-days, for the first kickoff at Paladin Stadium.

I’m not giving that up. I’m going to throttle back. I spent most of April deciding. Furman All the Time! – if you don’t know that, you’re unlikely to be reading this – is no more. I’m not going to be comprehensive, but if I stopped writing about the Paladins, (a.) I’d be drunk from tailgating, and (b.) I might as well spend my spare time updating my will.

Seven late nights a week means occasionally I’m a writer, but most of the time I’m just a typist. I’m going to write less but better. No more daily notebooks, no more sports schedules and no more providing information that is provided by the schools themselves.

It’s all going to be here – an old website I’ve barely used in recent years – whether concerning, alphabetically, Clinton High, Furman University, Laurens Academy, Laurens High, Presbyterian College or whatever other sporting topic that occasionally strikes my fancy.

Without question, I enjoy writing about Citadel-Furman and Clinton-Laurens as much as the Daytona 500. It’s just hard to make a living.

Take a look at my books at montedutton.net.