By MONTE DUTTON

I’m no expert at Fourth of July celebrations. I’ve been to a few ballgames. For many years, I wrote about a stock-car race thereabouts.

Mainly I just hear the bombs bursting in air. I miss the rocket’s red glare.

Small towns have more sense. One of my familiar cliches in NASCAR press boxes was, Nothing I love more than daytime fireworks. A simulated bomb seldom explodes around here before dusk, or, in rare instances, dawn.

Some guy won the race. Shoot off the fireworks. City folks, no doubt.

City folks have cookouts and call them barbecues. The prosecution rests.

While my memories of the Fourth are unconventional, they are vivid.

The first time NASCAR scheduled the summertime race in Daytona Beach, Fla., at night, it was postponed to the fall by fire. I spent several days stranded on the non-burning side of the Halifax River. On the Fourth, I played golf in heavy smoke and triple digits (temperature and score). My distinct feeling was that the insurgents had reached the outskirts of the capital.

That day I realized high-school football had not made me immune to heat. I was already cautious. I became precautious.

On that trip, I flew down and rented a car to drive back on account of the insurgents (wildfires) had closed the airport. I resolved never to fly down there again.

The next year, my personal car was burglarized in the motel parking lot. I was one of several “guests” to have windows busted. I didn’t lose anything else. Apparently, my musical tastes didn’t correlate positively with the burglar demographic.

I got in my first fistfight on the Fourth of July. I was eight. I can’t remember another. The growth of professional wrestling gradually ended one person yelling at another, Put ‘em up! The preferred method is now the post-shove charge of a rhino.

My least favorite Fourth of July was Dave Righetti no-hitting the Red Sox.

I once attended Freedom Weekend Aloft, which floated elsewhere while I was NASCAR-obsessed. It was a festival of lovely hot-air balloons and rowdy rock fans, all gathered at a hot, concrete, former air base. What could go wrong?

My newspaper chums called it Freedom Weekend Amok.

The only band I remember was the Georgia Satellites.

Now I realize I’ve been watching the progress of Hurricane Beryl for an hour.

No athlete has ever won Southern Conference Female Athlete of the Year … until now.

A native of Spartanburg, Anna Morgan gave Furman its fifth consecutive SoCon distinction and 13th in school history. The Paladin women’s golf team leads all Furman programs with five SoCon Female Athlete of the Year citations.  Overall, Furman has garnered 23 SoCon Female and Male Athletes of the Year combined.

Morgan earned her third-consecutive Edna Hartness Furman Female Athlete of the Year award in 2023-24, marking the first three-time winner in Paladin history.  A WGCA first team All-American and GolfWeek second team All-American, she competed in her fourth-straight NCAA regional this spring and concluded the season ranked 17th nationally.

A May graduate with a 3.6 grade-point average in politics and international affairs, Morgan was selected to the CSC Academic All-District Team, WGCA All-America Scholar Team, SoCon Academic All-Conference Team, SoCon Academic Honor Roll, and Furman Dean’s List.

Morgan will compete as a member of the U.S. team at the Arnold Palmer Cup, a three-day, Ryder Cup-style event featuring the world’s top men’s and women’s college golfers, this Friday through Sunday at Lahinch Golf Club in Clare, Ireland.

A senior from Spartanburg, S.C., Morgan was honored with her third-straight SoCon Female Athlete of the Year award on Monday, a league record.  She also earned her third-consecutive Edna Hartness Furman Female Athlete of the Year award in 2023-24, marking the first three-time winner in Paladin history.  

A WGCA first team All-American and GolfWeek second team All-American, she competed in her fourth-straight NCAA regional this spring and concluded the season ranked 17th nationally in the final Scoreboard by clippd rankings.  A three-time Southern Conference Player of the Year selection, she recorded a 70.1 stroke average over 33 rounds this season, the lowest single-season stroke average in program history.  Her career stroke average of 72.2 is also a Furman standard.  

Morgan won her second straight SoCon individual championship. The victory marked the eighth individual win of her career and the fourth during the 2023-24 season, both Paladin records.  

The United States leads the Palmer Cup series 14-12-1.

Furman placed six players on the Women’s Golf Coaches Association’s (WGCA) All-America Scholar Team.

To be selected, a student-athlete must have an overall grade-point average of 3.50 or higher and must also be an amateur and on the team’s roster through the conclusion of the team’s season.

The Paladins’ selections are Morgan, Liza Lapeyre (3.68, accounting), Caroline Crumrine (3.74, applied mathematics), Kelzi Mauzy (3.81, health sciences), Alise Knudson (3.77, business administration) and Audrey Ryu (4.0, chemistry).

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