By MONTE DUTTON

In the first three football games of the season, Clinton got off to slow starts.
“We’ve got to get better,” said head coach Corey Fountain.
In all but one game since, the Red Devils have literally hit the ground running. It’s remarkable. With the exception of another long night at Daniel on Sept. 30, Clinton has sizzled at the start.
Chapman. Chesnee. Landrum. Blacksburg. Liberty. Pelion. Chester. Seven out of eight. Six in a row, scoring at least 42 points in each. The pattern has been the Devils building a big first-half lead, then playing the reserves, at which point the opposition trims the point spread.

Guess what? The reserves have gotten better.
Friday night’s opponent in the Class 2A quarterfinals, Batesburg-Leesville, has won all 12 of its games. The Panthers have shut out five opponents. They are the only team that has beaten another set of Panthers, the ones in Abbeville (10-1), 37-35.
By every right, Batesburg-Leesville, the only unbeaten team in 2A, deserves to be ranked No. 1 in the state. Last week, while Clinton was thumping Chester, 48-20, Batesburg-Leesville was annihilating Andrew Jackson of Kershaw, 49-14.

The Panthers have three more wins and two less losses. Clinton’s non-region schedule, all against bigger schools, was tougher. Batesburg-Leesville’s Region 2-2A schedule was tougher. The Panthers were fortunate to slip past Strom Thurmond, 8-7. None of Clinton’s four Region 1 opponents came closer than 20 points.
“I saw Batesburg-Leesville play Saluda,” Fountain said after the Chester win. “They can win in all phases of the game: kicking game, quarterback, running game, fine receivers … it’s going to be a challenge for our guys.”

Batesburg-Leesville’s head coach, Greg Lawson, spent four years (2008-11) at Laurens, where his record was 18-22. For two of those years, Fountain was an assistant.
This is Lawson’s third season at B-L. He opened his first two seasons against Clinton, falling 55-20 and 50-28. If the Red Devils win at Wilder Stadium on Friday night, he will end his third season there.
That’s a big if. The Panthers were 4-7 and 5-6 in Lawson’s first two years. At the moment, Batesburg-Leesville is unbeaten for the first time since 2000. The Panthers have scratched and clawed their way near the summit for the first time in a while. Clinton has been there, without reaching it yet, for four straight seasons.

In the previous three, the Red Devils lost second-, third- or fourth-round playoff games on the road. This year the brackets put them at home all the way to the state finals at South Carolina State in Orangeburg if they can get that far.
Holy Zoom, Batman! Big Red can run. This year, a deep stable of rushers has combined for 3,719 yards, averaging 8.0 yards for all of them. The junior back who is nicknamed “Zoom,” Jevan Cook, has netted 1,360 of them. Four more have over 400 yards. Eight have at least 145. All eight average at least 6.2. Cook averages 8.45. The quarterback, senior Tushawan Richardson, averages 9.5.

Richardson, a skilled passer when called upon, has completed 58/107 for 1,048 yards and 12 touchdowns. He has been intercepted once in 11 games. The full Clinton offense averages 439.9 yards a game.
Want a fun fact? The Red Devils average 8.0 yards on both runs and passes. This bunch gobbles up yards as if Thanksgiving was on Fridays.

Batesburg-Leesville has stacked up yards like cordwood, too. Its leading rusher, Amadre Wooden, has 1,852 yards. Its quarterback, Tanner Watkins, has completed 67/98 for 1,245 yards and 17 TDs. He’s been picked three times.
Other than Wooden, no B-L rusher has more than 145 yards. He’s a workhorse.

History favors the Red Devils, who lead the all-time series, 8-1, and the one loss was in 1953.

The other Upstate semifinal matches Fairfield Central of Winnsboro and Central of Pageland. Clinton leads the series against the Griffins, 7-1, and its predecessor, Winnsboro High, 10-0. The Red Devils defeated Central in the 1974 Class 3A playoffs.

This is a serious matter to be determined by teams of proud, tough young men, but a rocking Wilder Stadium crowd won’t hurt.

“I guess that I’ve taught tougher men, but I really can’t remember when.” – Shel Silverstein, “A Boy Named Sue”
Wellpilgrim.com is winding down the fall making a transition to the winter chill. The bounces of the balls are getting truer.

Times are changing. I am aware of how irrelevant what I do for a living has become and thus how unimportant my efforts are. The readers appreciate them, but there aren’t enough of them. I doubt there ever will be again.

It’s what I do. It’s what I know.
Support the advertisers. They are all fine people who want their businesses associated with honest coverage of local sports.
In the off chance you’d like to read my novels and other books, they’re available on Amazon and many prominent bookseller sites.

You can read them on your phones and other devices for a modest cost. I make a bit more if you purchase the actual books, but what I mainly want is for folks to read them.

Longer Songs, a collection of short stories that were based on songs I wrote, was published in 2017. I just read it for the first time since I wrote it, and it was better than I remembered. One of its purposes was to provide a sampler of my fiction. A download is only 99 cents, and the paperback is $7.99. You can’t afford not to read it, not that I’m objective.

Photo galleries are posted on Instagram @furmanatt and @laurenscountysports.
Thanks for putting up with me.