By MONTE DUTTON

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, though the streams are swollen, keep them dogies rollin’, Rawhide! All the things I’m missin’, good vittles, love and kissin’, are waiting at the end of my ride.

The herds are being assembled. The trail bosses are Steve Englehart, Jolly Doolittle, Corey Fountain and Greg Porter.

With the heat safely outside, nestled behind the ever-present laptop, the mind’s eye roams to a floodlit Wilder Stadium, home side packed in, almost on top of the sidelines. The image is intoxicating.

Fountain, forever upbeat, is both admired and respected by the troops, who cheerfully climb mountains at his behest. They have fun. Winning is fun.

I expect K.C. Hanna will rock similarly. The acquisition of Porter as head coach changes everything.

For obvious reasons, I don’t know Porter as well as Fountain and Englehart. I see why he’s successful. Porter is a no-nonsense motivator. He takes over a program starved for success. A few victories fix that.

Englehart changed everything when he arrived at Presbyterian College. Mainly Englehart changed everything back. His predecessor left a failed experiment and precious little of a team.

It’s so easy now to dismiss Kevin Kelley’s season as a disaster, though it was. It was fascinating to watch. The Blue Hose sprinted up a hill and drubbed inferior opposition in the first two skirmishes, then charged off a cliff. A week after winning by 65 points, they lost by 72, and, quoting Jackie Gleason, “Awaaayy we go!”

Kelley wanted to pull the football equivalent of the American Revolution, but he’s remembered for stumbling toward the Little Bighorn. Englehart came in, hitched up his britches and went to work.

The first time I met Englehart, I liked him as much as I do now, which is a lot. The Blue Hose are going to be fine.

I don’t know enough about Laurens Academy to hazard a guess, but what I know about Doolittle, I like. Football is volatile, eight at a time, and the Crusaders play five opponents twice.

I tend to the optimistic going in.

Warmest congratulations are in order for Travis “Tee” Langford, who was the girls basketball coach at Ware Shoals when I began my journalism career at the Greenwood Index-Journal.

While I was preoccupied with the pursuit of race cars for 20 years, Langford won three state championship for the Laurens Raiders. I never ran into him for almost 40 years until we chatted again a year or two back.

Langford was 355-174 with the Hornets and Raiders, winning Class 4A state titles at LDHS in 1998, 1999 and 2001. His teams reached the Upstate finals six times at Laurens and once at Ware Shoals.

The year’s inductees also include Homer Carraway of Lugoff-Elgin, Mike Culp of Camden and Wayne Jones of T.L. Hanna (Anderson). They are to be enshrined on July 23 at Larkin’s Restaurant in Greenville.

Not only did Clinton’s Mia Carles win the S.C. Junior Girls Match Play Championship. She won it for the second year in a row.

Match play. Head to head. It took six matches for Carles to win.

At the Wildewood Club in Columbia, Carles bested, among others, Kinley Brazell of Columbia, Marissa Scaletta of Belton, Akiera Sanchez of Charleston and, at last, Marissa Scaletta of Belton, 3-and-2, in the final.

Carles took the lead on the first hole and never trailed, leading by four at the turn.

Presbyterian’s Kaleb Scott made the National Association of Basketball Coaches Honors Court, which recognizes men’s collegiate basketball players who excelled academically during the past season.
Scott, who has a 3.42 cumulative GPA as a business management major, played an integral role the Blue Hose’ 14-19 season. He recorded eight double-figure scoring games including posting a double-double with 22 points and 12 rebounds in Presbyterian’s win over Johnson & Wales. He scored 10 points in his first game as a Blue Hose in Presbyterian’s season-opening road win at SEC foe Vanderbilt.

To be named to the NABC Honors Court, a student-athlete must be a junior, senior or graduate student with a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher after the 2023-24 academic year.

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