By MONTE DUTTON

What do you do? You shake hands, pick up the check and get back to work on games you can actually win.

Mystery surrounds the Presbyterian Blue Hose in the aftermath of last Thursday night’s 63-10 shellacking at Mercer. The Bears won an FCS playoff game last year. The Blue Hose don’t give scholarships.

The game in Macon, Ga., was about as terrifying as the 50-year-old movie Macon County Line, though not bloody. Then again, the flick wasn’t true. The game was ugly. The movie was carnage.

“The score, I think, was not indicative of how good this team can be,” said PC head coach Steve Englehart. “Obviously, we got outmatched a little bit.

“You always wonder how you’re going to tackle in the first game. We didn’t have to worry for very long. We didn’t tackle very well at all. Obviously, their playmakers and their speed had a lot to do with it, but we didn’t help ourselves at all.”

This Saturday finds the Blue Hose playing at, of all places, Greenwood High School, and versus, of all schools, Erskine College. It’s a bit hard to figure.

The Blue Hose haven’t played the Flying Fleet – a nonpareil matchup of nicknames – since farmers stopped plowing with mules. Erskine’s last quarterback was Bob Strock until they got the propellers whirling again in 2020, though, due to COVID, the Fleet didn’t play until 2021.

Last year Erskine was 0-11, but it opened this season with a 52-0 victory over Saint Andrews (N.C.), remembered in Clinton because, in Kevin Kelley’s first game as PC head coach, the Blue Hose scored 84 points. The Knights scored 43. Kelley had one more week to be a sensation.

A week later, Presbyterian hosts Virginia University of Lynchburg, a private school and the only one the Blue Hose have beaten in each of the past two season.

Englehart addressed these matters on Monday morning in his first weekly media session at Templeton Center. Like most other coaches I see regularly, Englehart is a standup guy.

“I think our guys maintained their composure pretty well,” he said. “Eventually, things just start to pile up.

“It was a disappointed frustration of thinking we were going to do better. … My job now is to make sure we keep that confidence about them. We’ve just got to move on to the next week.”

Englehart knows what he was up against in Macon. He doesn’t know about Erskine.

“It’s hard to score 52 points, and it’s hard to keep another team from scoring, no matter who you’re playing,” he said. “It’s hard to gauge, based on [whom] they’re playing. We’ve just got to go back to fundamentals.

“We’ve got to focus on how we play the game.”

All good things must come to an end. After winning twice on the road, Wardlaw ruined Laurens Academy’s home opener on Friday night with a 32-20 victory.

Some folks who don’t know about the Patriots’ quarterback, Colt Bailey, are bound to find out.

Bailey rushed for 198 yards, giving him 422 in two games for Wardlaw (2-0). He deigned pass six times, hitting four for 60 yards.

Two interceptions hurt the Crusaders, who got the best of the stats. Laurens Academy (2-1) outrushed Wardlaw, 300-229, and outpassed it, 140-60. Altogether, the yardage was 440-290.

Garrett Murphy scored two touchdowns and gained 196 yards in 27 carries. Caleb Hardy added another rushing touchdown. Quarterback Ethan Collins complete 16/23 passes for 140 yards.

The Oakbrook Knights (0-2), of Spartanburg, visit Todd Kirk Field this Friday.

Come lightning, rain and dark of night, Presbyterian’s resurgent women’s soccer team improved to 4-1 with … a 4-1 victory over South Carolina State (0-6) on Sunday night.

Redshirt-sophomore Lina-Marie Müller landed two goals in the blowout, PC’s first multi-goal performance since Sloan Spees against Gardner-Webb last season.

This time Spees had a goal and an assist.

Delayed by 73 minutes due to lightning in the area, Muller scored the game’s first goal just 2 minutes, 19 seconds into the match.

The Blue Hose visit The Citadel on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Clinton also prevailed, 6-0, in its junior-varsity game at Laurens (0-1) last Thursday.

The margin of victory was Graydon Watkins’ four-yard touchdown pass to Zydarrion Butler, capping a 14-play, 63-yard drive in the first quarter.

Defense ruled the evening. Early in the third quarter, the Raiders’ Caleb Gilchrist intercepted a pass in the end zone to stop a Red Devil drive, and Clinton (1-0) made a fourth-down stop late in the game to preserve the victory.

Ren Hefley, once Kelley’s quarterback at PC, is now playing at Gardner-Webb, which provides a homecoming of sorts when the Runnin’ Bulldogs visit Bailey Memorial Stadium in three weeks.

The last five weeks have found Saturday as the most popular day for this site. It’s that high-school football, sports fans.

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