By Justin Jarrett
LowcoSports.com
Let’s face it: Last year was humbling for Lowco high school football.
No area public school team advanced past the second round of the playoffs, and the Lowco had only one representative in the SCISA state finals, though Thomas Heyward’s SCISA 1A title prevented us from a complete shutout.
And the winds of our best bellwether — how our Lowco squads match up with their peers from other regions — did not blow in our favor. Newcomer Bishop England crashed the Lowco party in Region 6-4A and claimed the region championship, recent Lowco bell cow Hampton County bowed out in the second round at Manning, and Pinewood Prep knocked Hilton Head Christian Academy from its perch as a perennial SCISA power.
It all added up to an early start to basketball season.
The final chapters of this season have yet to be written, but it’s shaping up to be a bounce-back year and a more fruitful fall for the Lowco in 2025.
The first winds of change came when Hilton Head High thoroughly dispatched the defending region champion Battling Bishops, who came to the island ranked third in Class 4A, and May River followed it up by slogging out a 14-7 home win over Bishop England in a steady rain Friday night.
Mind you, this was not a case of catching Bishop England in a rebuilding year. The Bishops were undefeated and ranked third in Class 4A before running into a one-two punch from the Lowco.
That means we’ll have a new region champ who reigns from the Lowco, and the Bishops still have to go through Beaufort and Bluffton, which boasts a stable of offensive stars who can hold their own in a shootout against any team in the state.
Each of the top four teams in the region is capable of making a deep run in the playoffs, but the road to Columbia still goes through South Florence. The Bruins ended Hilton Head High’s season a year ago, and the Seahawks would like nothing more than another opportunity to measure themselves against the gold standard, but they first have to deal with May River on Friday in The Tank. If Hilton Head wins, the Seahawks will just need to take care of business against Beaufort and Colleton County — the bottom two teams in the region standings — to run the table.
On the other hand … if the Sharks and their Slot-T attack find a way to fluster the Seahawks’ stoic quarterback and wear down B.J. Payne’s defense, chaos will ensue, and it won’t settle until May River invades The Den to take on the high-flying Bobcats on Oct. 30.
Such drama is hard to come by for Hampton County these days. After suffering three straight losses in the type of games that forge champions — win or lose — the Hurricanes have been untouchable in region play and are developing depth and tightening up for what could be a lengthy postseason.
The Lowcountry has been notoriously overlooked in relation to larger population centers (and media markets) in the state, and there’s only one way to break through the noise: Keep knocking on the door until it opens.
We’ll send several teams into the postseason with the pieces necessary to compete with the big boys from the Pee Dee and the Midlands, but the one who runs the Lowco gauntlet will earn the most advantageous path through the bracket.
We’ll find out over the next few weeks who has what it takes.
Justin Jarrett is the sports editor of The Island News and the founder of LowcoSports.com. He was the sports editor of the Island Packet and the Beaufort Gazette for 6½ years. He has a passion for sports and community journalism and a questionable sense of humor.
