The summer sports doldrums are ending.

The football teams are hitting the practice fields. Scrimmages begin in a week. Laurens Academy gets a head start with a game on Aug. 16 against Cambridge Academy in Greenwood.

The Laurens and Clinton seasons begin a week later, both at home in big games.

Hillcrest, where LDHS’s Greg Porter won a state title in 2014, visits K.C. Hanna Stadium on Aug. 23, while Clinton takes on Woodruff, a school with which it began its seasons for decades, at Wilder Stadium.

Presbyterian College, which began practice on Wednesday, visits a formidable foe in Mercer, a Southern Conference member, on Thursday, Aug. 29.

Drake University, the defending Pioneer Football League champion, is picked to win the 2024 championship in the league’s Preseason Coaches’ Poll.

Drake received eight of the 11 first-place votes from the league’s coaches and 98 of the maximum 100 points available, with coaches unable to vote for their own teams.

St. Thomas, the 2022 PFL Champion, followed Drake in the poll with 87 points, including one first-place vote. Davidson also received a first-place vote and totaled 81 points to finish third in the poll.

Butler (72 points) and San Diego (67) were picked to finish fourth and fifth, with San Diego receiving a first-place vote. The pair rounded out a group of teams that are the clear frontrunners entering the season.

Dayton, with 49 points, opens the second half of the Preseason Coaches’ Poll. The Flyers are followed by a trio of tightly packed teams: Presbyterian (39 points), Marist (37), and Morehead State (35). Valparaiso (22) and Stetson (18) round out the 11-team poll.

The upcoming season marks the 32nd year of the Pioneer Football League. The league features 11 teams, each playing an eight-game schedule to determine the league champion and recipient of the automatic bid to the NCAA FCS Championship.

The schedule gets underway Thursday, Aug. 29, with a four-game slate, followed by the league’s remaining seven teams on Sat., Aug. 31. The 2024 PFL Championship race gets underway with a four-game slate on Sat., Sept. 28.

The three PC football players who made All-Pioneer Football League after last season are on the preseason team this season.

Wide receiver Dominic Kibby, tight end Worth Warner and linebacker Alex Herriott were chosen among the league’s best.

The 112^th season of football at PC opens Aug. 29 at Mercer.

Eleven players who received at least an honorable mention nod from the PFL last fall are back in the fold.

Broken down by school, the selections were Drake 7, Davidson 4, PC 3, Morehead State 3, Butler 3, San Diego 3, Saint Thomas 2, Dayton 2, Valparaiso 1, Marist 1 and Stetson 1.

Preseason All-PFL Team

Offense

WR – Dominic Kibby (Presbyterian)

WR – Ryan Upp (Morehead State)

WR – Mitchell January (Drake)

QB – Luke Bailey (Drake)

RB – Mari Adams (Davidson)

RB – Hope Adebayo (St. Thomas)

FB – Joey Suchy (Butler)

AP – Ryan Upp (Morehead State)

TE – Worth Warner (Presbyterian)

OL – Dylan DeMaison (Dayton)

OL – Adam Dolan (Butler)

OL – Malik McDaniel (Davidson)

OL – Ross Palmer (Drake)

OL – Alec Rasmussen (St. Thomas)

Defense

DL – Finn Claypool (Drake)

DL – Sam Hafner (Valparaiso)

DL – Malachi Cooper (San Diego)

DL – Julian Rawlins (Davidson)

LB – Andrew Martin (Stetson)

LB – Aiden McKinley (Dayton)

LB – Alex Herriott (Presbyterian)

LB – Chase Lyons (San Diego)

DB – Nick Bafia (Butler)

DB – Jihad McCall (Morehead State)

DB – Eric Haney (San Diego)

DB – Daniel Carter (Davidson) 

Special Teams

PK – Shane Dunning (Drake)

P – Shane Dunning (Drake)

RS – Tristan Shannon (Marist)

3LS – Brett Welsing (Drake)

Looking at the fall’s football schedule, it looks as if I’ll have a twinbill on Sept. 28 when Chattanooga visits Furman at 2 p.m. and Davidson takes on Presbyterian in Clinton at 7.

The following week, the Paladins are at The Citadel and PC travels to San Diego. As much as I enjoyed a trip to that lovely California city in the 1980s, I shan’t return unless somehow my novel, The Graduate Transfer, gets published and I’m summoned to Hollywood to negotiate movie rights.

In two months.

One never knows. I’ve received some lovely rejection notes.

The Big South Conference announced the official nominees for the Conference’s Woman of the Year award.

This year’s nominees are Charleston Southern softball player Blake Holtorf (San Antonio, Texas), High Point basketball player Callie Scheier (Clemmons, N.C.), Longwood softball player Lauren Fox (Ashburn, Va.), Presbyterian College softball player Kaitlyn Tucker (Oakboro, N.C.), Radford lacrosse goalkeeper Olivia Hunter(Mechanicsville, Va.), Radford soccer player Helena Willson (Leesburg, Va.), UNC Asheville track & field athlete Mallory Haney (Irmo), USC Upstate soccer goalkeeper Cora Brendle (Boiling Springs, S.C.) and Winthrop golfer Valentine Savioz(Montreux, Switzerland).

Tucker, a biology major, was a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha (ZTA) Executive Council where she was Academic Chair, and assisted with community service projects in Clinton each semester. In addition, she was a fundraising coordinator for the American Cancer Society in 2023-24, was selected by her teammates to serve on PC’s Softball Unity Council for two seasons and was a U14-16 assistant softball coach for three summers.

As football season approaches, I expect to streamline the site name. Since the coverage – Furman and Laurens County – is difficult to convey in a word, I may stick with Wellpilgrim (com, net, et al.). Or, if anyone thinks of anything snazzy, I’ll take it under advisement.

A shorter name makes it more likely that readers go directly to the site without linking through social media (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Advertising alone will not keep me going, but there’s room for a few more. Every ad is inset in every story.

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