By MONTE DUTTON

They call him Zoom, and Javen Cook is a thoroughly dangerous young man. He’s little, but he’s loud. Actually, it’s mainly the crowd that gets loud.
The Clinton junior is a phenomenon. He’s so shifty they can’t tackle him and so small they can’t find him, and he and his fellow Red Devils couldn’t have tortured Batesville-Leesville (12-1) more had they been scratching blackboards.
Clinton moved past the top-ranked Class 2A team, 31-14, in front of a Wilder Stadium crowd of about 5,500 who braved the chill. The chief bravery was not in the stands, however.

“We knew [Batesburg-Leesville] was going to hit us, and we were going to hit them,” Clinton head coach Corey Fountain said. “We knew it was going to be a game where one team gets tired of getting punched in the mouth and taps out. Our guys never tapped out, and they kept the gas pedal down.”
Cook carried the ball 24 times for 269 yards and three touchdowns. Every time he took it with him, the average gain was 11.2 yards. For the season, his rushing total swelled to 1,629 in 185 attempts with 21 touchdowns. He averages 8.8 yards per carry and 135.8 a game.

One can imagine the Panthers who deemed Cook their prey: Who is he? What is he? Where did he go? What’s more, Batesburg-Leesville had to track three other Red Devils who combined for 92 yards. As a team, Clinton averaged 7.3 yards per rush. If not for an unfortunate loss of 22 yards on a faulty punt, the Red Devils would have netted 406 yards on the ground. Instead, that was the gross. The net was 382 yards on the Wilder Stadium yellowing tundra.
“This game was won in the weight room, just grinding,” Cook said. “It’s my teammates pushing every play. We gotta get the win.
“It’s the resilience.”

Cook was the beneficiary of rugged line work, and the Red Devils’ ball distributor, senior quarterback Tushawan Richardson, actually made the game’s most spectacular and significant score. On fourth down and goal from the 9-yard line, Richardson looked to pass, feinted to do so, and made a banzai run down the right sideline, on the final play of the first half, diving into the end zone.
Coupled with Lukas Kuykendall’s extra point, the adventure tied the game, 14-14, at halftime, and it seemed to rob the visiting Panthers of vim and vigor. Clinton (10-2) shut out Batesburg-Leesville in the second half and outgained it, 197 yards to 115.

For the second week in a row, Clinton stunned the opposition with a spectacular touchdown in the waning seconds of the half.
“Our guys love the weight room,” Fountain said. “We lift weights four days a week, even during the season. Our guys get after it. When you see the second half, you’re seeing the weight room paying off.
“One thing that helps us is we’re playing at home. We have a certain routine, just like today. We have school, we have meetings starting at 1:30, offense, defense, special teams. We have those meetings, we eat, we get ready. Being able to do that at home is huge for us.”

Clinton won total yards (393-202), first downs (22-14), turnovers (1-3) and possession time (29:48-18:12).
Another big moment was what seemed a disaster at the time. On the Red Devils’ first possession of the third quarter, the snap deflected off punter Kuykendall’s hands and, by the time he corralled it, he was 22 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Batesburg-Leesville had a possession in a tie game at the 18.

Two plays netted seven yards, and on third down, B-L quarterback Tanner Watkins fumbled, and Brett Young pounced on it at the 17.

Clinton never punted. The misfortune was the only time it tried. Later Kuykendall kicked a 19-yard field goal, his third in five tries this season.

Clinton took over and took the lead for good six plays later on Cook’s second touchdown, from 10 yards out. The third also spanned 10 yards, with 2:24 left in the game.
Batesburg-Leesville’s prodigious rusher, Amadre Wooden, looks as if he makes two of Cook in size. He gained 75 yards in 19 carries. Watkins was 9/19 for 89 yards. Maison Tinsley intercepted Watkins in the fourth quarter.
Fairfield Central (12-1), of Winnsboro, steamed past another Central, of Pageland (10-3), 48-28. Clinton has not hosted an Upstate championship game since 1994, when Greer won, 22-0.

Seven of the eight previous games against the Griffins have occurred in the playoffs. Clinton has also won seven of the eight.
“When you’re looking at Fairfield Central, you’re looking at a fast, physical football team,” said Fountain after his 50th victory at CHS. “It’s going to be another ‘slobber-knocker’ like it was tonight.”

A season never opens without the fans aspiring for greatness in the form of Upstate and state championships. The Red Devils have won 15 of the former and eight of the latter. Clinton last won both in 2009.

Under Keith Richardson, Clinton won more games than any other team in America during the 1970s. The Red Devils were 113-12-1 (.901). In the current decade so far, the Red Devils are 47-11 (.810).
It’s a powerful legacy best addressed, in Fountain’s words, by going 1-0 every week.

“I guess that I’ve fought 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.