By MONTE DUTTON

On Thursday, I got up at dawn and got done after midnight.
On Saturday, I got up at dawn and got done after midnight.
In between, I left the house once but spent the majority of the day and night writing and laying out and selecting photos. I stayed up past midnight just to stay in practice.
Clinton won the Class 2A football championship. Furman men’s basketball is 10-1. I can work long hours if I’m motivated. I’m washed up, but at least I’m not a never-was.

I take a lot of snapshots, and life has plenty of them.
On Saturday morning, between Whiteford’s Drive In and Bon Secours Wellness Arena, I had a close call on the outskirts of Greenville.
I was passing a pickup, pulling a trailer with a lawn tractor on it. I was in the left of four lanes, about to pull alongside. The hood flew off the lawn tractor and headed toward my windshield. There was no time to think. I just jerked the wheel to the left and back, lest I hit the concrete wall. It worked. The hood flew over the bed and missed me.

It seemed like a NASCAR in-car replay. I took a deep breath and tried to motion to the other driver that he was missing something. I don’t know sign language, and he probably doesn’t understand it. I don’t think he had any idea what happened.
On Friday night, I had a unique experience. Phil Kornblut sent a text asking me to call his scoreboard show and talk about the Red Devils. I made the call a couple minutes before he went on the air, hoping to beat the crowd.

I was watching the Westside-South Florence game on TV. Phil was there. He was talking about the game I was watching with a colleague on the sideline. The radio was ahead of the telecast. I heard what happened before it did. South Florence won, 42-41, when the Rams’ coach, Brian Lane, went for the two-point conversion to win and didn’t.
Calling in early didn’t do a bit of good. I’ve been on a lot of radio shows but never with someone who was at the event I was watching on TV. I think the Class 2A game, on a Thursday afternoon, had the biggest crowd of any of them.

On the sideline while Clinton was defeating Barnwell, I pointed to the throng on the visitors’ side of Oliver C. Dawson Stadium and said to Steve Englehart, “PC’s got to find a way to tap into this.”
Bringing in some Laurens County players would be a start.
Clinton state titles by point spread:
(1.) 1972: Clinton 32, Hanahan 0
(2.) 1985: Clinton 30, Middleton 0
(3.) 2024: Clinton 35, Barnwell 6
(4.) 1977: Clinton 34, James Island 7
(5.) 1987: Clinton 30, Marion 7

(6.) 1978: Clinton 16, James Island 6
(7.) 2009: Clinton 35, Myrtle Beach 26
(8.) 1975: Clinton 14, Myrtle Beach 6
(9.) 1939: Clinton 7, Lake View 6

As playing against an ACC school goes, Presbyterian got a good draw on Sunday in Coral Gables, Fla.

Kory Mincy

Or did they?
Sometimes when a small school challenges a big one enduring hard times, the big school is motivated by desperation. Such was the case as Miami defeated the Blue Hose soundly, 94-75.
The Hurricanes (4-7) produced three players who scored 20 points or more. Matthew Cleveland dropped 24, Brandon Johnson 22 and Lynn Kidd with 20.

PC (6-6) committed only three turnovers.
Kory Mincy led the Blue Hose with 14 points. Kaleb Scott, Kobe Stewart and Carl Parrish each scored 13. Jaylen Peterson had 12.
If Virginia University of Lynchburg has a basketball team similar to its football squad, the Blue Hose will climb back above .500 at Templeton Center on Wednesday afternoon at 2.
Take a look at the stats here.

No surprises arose at Templeton, where Coastal Carolina (7-1) throttled Presbyterian, 73-46, in women’s basketball.
PC (1-9) actually led, 18-17, after a quarter.
The Chanticleers put a stop to that by outscoring the Hose, 22-4, in the second period.
Kishya Anderson led PC with 11 points, and Paige Kindseth added 10. Laney Scoggins was the rebounding leader with six.
Kristin Williams led the Chanticleers with 16 points. Alancia Ramsey added 15 and Jaylen Ponder 13.

The Blue Hose head to Puerto Rico for competition against Morgan State and Montana State on Dec. 18-19.
Take a look at the stats here.

Sixth-ranked PC racked up 51 victories at the Wasp Invitational women’s wrestling events, hosted by Emory & Henry in Virginia.
Chiara Barbieri (103 class), Alyssa Mahan (124), May Cuyler (160) and Ella Beam (207) won all 13 matches between themselves, helping the Blue Hose reach 16 first-place showings in only three tournaments this year.

At the end of the near-nine hour tournament in Virginia, PC had amassed 10 technical falls and an impressive 28 victories via pin.
Friday served as a tune-up for the Midlands Championships later this month, in Chicago.

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I might have taken better care of myself.” – Willie Nelson, 91
Wellpilgrim.com is adjusting to the winter chill. The bounces of the balls are getting truer, and soon it’ll all be indoors.

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.
The most researched of my novels is Cowboys Come Home (2016), set at the end of World War II when two Texans come home from the Pacific and find the world has changed back home, too.
Photo galleries are posted on Instagram @furmanatt and @laurenscountysports.
Thanks for putting up with me.