Plumbers in Wando, SC

A solid contingent of Charleston-area high school football players helped guide the South Carolina team to a 17-13 win over North Carolina in the 86th annual Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas, played at Spartanburg High School on Saturday afternoon.

Leading the way for the South Carolina team was Wando High linebacker Mikey Rosa, who was named the defensive most valuable player after racking up seven tackles, including three tackles for loss.

Berkeley head coach Jerry Brown served as the head coach for the South Carolina team. Brown played in the Shrine Bowl in 1967 and was a South Carolina assistant in the 2000 game. He finishes with a 3-0 record in the game.

“It was fun, a great week, and the game was even better,” said Rosa, who plans to sign with The Citadel on Wednesday. “We built a good chemistry during the week and I think that was a main reason we won. One of the things Coach Brown talked about when we got here was about leaving the ego at the door. I think we all did that and came together.”

Rosa was one of four linebackers from the Charleston area to play for the Sandlappers, joining Cameron Avery (Cane Bay), Omari Jenkins (Timberland) and Christian Garland (Ashley Ridge).

Jenkins, one of the team captains for the Sandlappers, finished with five tackles, including 2½ tackles for loss. Avery had four tackles and Garland was credited with two tackles.

Fort Dorchester defensive lineman DeAndre Jones tallied four tackles with a sack and Summerville defensive back Michael Jenkins was credited with one tackle.

On offense, Woodland’s Suderian Harrison, a quarterback during the regular season, played wide receiver in the game and had one 10-yard reception. Summerville running back Marquez Spells had 12 yards rushing on three carries.

South Florence quarterback LaNorris Sellers was named the offensive most valuable player. Sellers, currently a Syracuse commit, completed 9 of 13 passes for 121 yards and rushed for 41 yards. Sellers threw a 55-yard touchdown pass to Clemson commit Tyler Brown of Greenville High.

Another Clemson commit, Dutch Fork running back Jarvis Green, had 58 yards rushing on 15 carries. His 2-yard run with 4:40 left in the game proved to be the game-winning score for the Sandlappers.

South Carolina finished the game with 291 total yards while the defense limited the Tarheels to 182 total yards. The only negative in the win for South Carolina was 15 penalties for 120 yards, including several personal foul flags.

This year’s game marked the first in the series since 2019. The game was cancelled due to COVID issues in 2020 and 2021.

Even with six players signed or committed to Division I college baseball scholarships, winning a state championship can have its challenges.

The Oceanside Collegiate Landsharks withstood the challenges and capped a 28-5 season with the Class AA state championship. The Landsharks defeated Gray Collegiate, 4-2, in game two of the best-of-three series to sweep their way to the title. Oceanside won game one, 1-0, on Saturday night.

The Landsharks are repeat state champions, having won the Class AAA state title last season before realignment pushed them back to Class AA.

“We don’t just roll the ball out there and say ‘let’s go,’” OCA head coach Richie McCullough said. “We work hard, every single day. These guys put in the work. I’ve never seen a group with their type of work ethic. It doesn’t happen by accident. They work at this really hard. This is really special, It’s so amazing to see how much love the game and how much they love each other.”

OCA got all the runs they needed in the first inning, stringing together a two-run single by Chase Jarnagin around a hit batsman, two errors, and a sacrifice fly from Jackson Sobel.

Jarnagin, the starting pitcher, made that lead stand. He did not allow a hit until the sixth inning when he allowed the only two runs for Gray. He left allowing two singles.

Sobel, as he did often this season, came in relief and stranded the bases loaded in the sixth. He set the side down in order in the seventh.

“This means more, just being able to grind out the season and watch it all come together,” said Sobel, the Class AA pitcher of the year. “We had some ups and downs, some adversity we had to work through, but we put it all together in the playoffs,

“It has been a challenging season, just going in with high expectations and everyone on the outside thinking we should win every game. Every team we played treated their game against us like a world series, but we found a way to focus and just play the game one at a time.”

McCullough says losing a lot of the top talent from this team makes winning all the more special for him as a coach.

“It feels good, feels real good,” the coach said. “Here lately we were winning games 1-0, 4-2, 2-0, nothing was easy. They tested the heart but its good to have it done. We’re gonna miss these guys.”

In Class AAA, Hanahan saw its bid for a state title end with a 5-4 loss at Clinton. The Hawks (26-9) fell behind 4-0 in the first inning but rallied to tie the game. Clinton scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the sixth inning.

Hanahan lost game one of the AAA series, 17-3, on Saturday night. Twice during the playoffs, the Hawks had to win two games in one night to remain alive. They beat Marlboro County twice to win the district title and beat Brookland-Cayce twice on last Friday to win the Lower State title.

The Wando High School wrestling team finished 16th at the AAAAA South Carolina State Wrestling Championships on Feb. 24 and 25. One Warrior came home as an individual state champion and another a runner-up in their respective weight classes.

Senior Pierce Carpenter-Kydd finished the season as the state champion in the 170-pound weight class. Coach Adam Schneider said Carpenter-Kydd “put in the work” in the off-season. The senior placed third in last year’s tournament and was determined to place first in his final team season.

“He’s not a kid that’s coming in to fool around. He comes in and has his fun but when it’s time to practice and it’s time to work, he’s one of the hardest workers we have,” Schneider said. “He was a little down last year after taking third. Obviously was happy with taking third, but his goal was really to be state champion and you can really see the offseason work that he put in.”

The tournament was also the first official girl’s state championship. Wando has five girls on the varsity wrestling team, three of whom qualified for state. They could choose to wrestle in the AAAAA boys’ division or participate in the girl’s tournament, which included teams from all schools, regardless of class. All chose to wrestle in the girl’s bracket, making sophomore Cassidy Warren Wando’s first wrestler to place in the girl’s tournament.

Warren, who is also a cheerleader in the fall, placed second in the 120-pound weight class. Schneider said he immediately noticed her tenacity when she joined the team this winter.

“I think from day one what I realized is how tough she is. Obviously, she’s a very good athlete. She’s a cheerleader, but she’s very tough. It’s not one of those sports where, you know, you can go out there and kind of walk through practice. You kind of have to fully immerse yourself and give it your all and she never complained. She wrestled with the guys, with the girls. It didn’t really matter who it was,” Schneider said.

The Wando Warriors made it to the Sweet 16 in the tournament, ending a tough season marked by injury and the loss of some of their starting wrestlers.

“We had a couple of starters that did not come out to us and that were kind of expected to come back out this year,” Schneider said. “We had some kids really step up which was outstanding, even through some of the injuries. We had some very good wrestlers kind of get banged up this year, get hurt, so a couple of them didn’t get to finish their senior seasons, which is a bummer.”

Though the tournament signaled the end of the varsity season, individual and club wrestling continues year round. Carpenter-Kydd and senior Jacob Pelbath were selected to compete in the 2023 SC North/South All-Star Wrestling Classic on March 3 and 4. Schneider was also named a coach of the 5A/1A-2A South All-Star team.

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HUGER S.C. (WCSC) - People that live in the Huger-Wando community are voicing their concerns to city leaders about everything from transportation to affordable housing.

Almost 200 people came to a community meeting at Cainhoy Elementary on Thursday. They say they feel overlooked when it comes to decisions regarding their area.

Carl Anderson, S.C. House of Representatives District 103, says he is new to representing the Huger-Wando area and wants their requests to be fulfilled.

“Berkeley County has several pots of money that we just hope would be shared across Berkeley County with every area of Berkeley County, but this area, as they said to me, they feel like they have been overlooked,” Anderson said. “So, I feel like this area needs a little bit more attention than the other areas.”

At the meeting, representatives from Berkeley County, the state’s health department and department of transportation, just to name a few, answered questions from the public.

“The funds that have come in from the federal government during this pandemic and what is going to be done with it,” Anderson said. “And we heard that only a fraction of those funds were spent. So, they want to be included in the funds that the county has so that things can get done in this area.”

Another issue brought up was the repaving of certain roads, the cost of affordable housing and overall severity of sewage and drainage problems.

One community member, Cynthia Lawrence, says she wished that the agencies could have gone into more detail with their answers.

“Well, I think the public is still a little leery about the answers that they received tonight from the agencies that were here,” Lawrence said. “We needed to go a little deeper and it just wasn’t enough time.”

Although the community members say they wish they had more time, other county and school representatives say they can answer more in-depth questions when contacted directly.

The hope is to have another meeting sometime in October, but no date has been set as of now. The organizer’s plans include inviting Berkeley County Water and Sewer so they can solve more of the sewage issues.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

South Carolina’s initial plan to improve traffic on Interstate 526 and the Long Point Road interchange in Mount Pleasant was met with an outpouring of public opposition, and that’s prompting the state to make revisions.

The road work is critical for operations at South Carolina’s busiest port, the Wando Welch Terminal at the end of Long Point Road, and for traffic relief at the busy interchange.

The plan calls for new elevated ramps to and from the interstate dedicated to port trucks, and a version presented to the public in 2022 showed that building those ramps could require the demolition of two or three homes in the Tidal Walk subdivision. The subdivision sits along the north side of I-526.

Nearly 540 people submitted comments about those plans in the fall and 59 percent opposed the proposed elevated port ramps, while just half supported the S.C. Department of Transportation’s favored plan known as Alternative 2.

S.C. Department of Transportation Project Manager Joy Riley said the responses showed that people in residential communities north of the interstate were against the proposed elevated ramps and favored keeping port truck traffic on Long Point Road. Unsurprisingly, those living in communities between the highway interchange and the port favored the new ramps, which would remove truck traffic from Long Point Road.

The plans were revised following the survey results, and those changes were outlined at an invitation-only “stakeholders meeting” at the end of November, which included homeowner associations and business owners, plus elected officials and SC Ports representatives.

The revised plans still call for elevated truck ramps, but no longer impact Seacoast Parkway or homes in the Tidal Walk subdivision. Riley said DOT also feels “pretty confident” that an analysis will justify noise walls along the north side of I-526, addressing another concern among residents.

“Noise has always been the number one concern in our neighborhood, along with not wanting any neighbors to lose their houses,” said Grassy Creek resident Lee Lazarus, who has spoken at public meetings about the plans. “Supposedly we’re going to something like a 20-foot wall.”

Under state law, DOT would need Mount Pleasant’s consent for the project. Riley said the town’s approval would likely be sought after another round of public comments following a meeting planned in March, which could prompt more refinements to the plan.

Mayor Will Haynie said the recent revisions addressed the town’s main concerns.

“People were going to lose their homes, and we are very happy that we’re not going to see that,” he said. “Not that there’s no room for improvement — such as turns onto Belle Hall Parkway — but the parts affecting neighborhoods in a major way have been addressed.”

The Belle Hall Parkway issue involves the planned elimination of left turns from Long Point Road to the parkway, where a Waffle House restaurant is located.

That may sound like a small detail, but the parkway is the main entrance to the large subdivision. The elimination of left turns would mean that anyone coming from the interstate would need to drive past the subdivision’s main entrance, then turn on a different road and double back.

Riley said DOT is still looking at alternatives that would allow for left turns there, but so far has not resolved the issue.

The work at I-526 and Long Point Road would be a large road project on its own, but it’s just a small part of the roughly $7 billion Lowcountry Corridor plan to widen the interstate from West Ashley to Mount Pleasant and redesign the interchange of interstates 526 and 26 in North Charleston.

The I-526/Long Point Road project is being addressed in the early years of the larger project partly because traffic has overwhelmed the interchange, and port-related truck traffic regularly backs up on the interstate while trying to exit at Long Point Road.

“It’s a failing interchange because it just cannot process the number of people who are trying to turn left to get to Mount Pleasant, and you have trucks continuously clogging up the interchange as well,” Riley said.

And traffic is expected to increase significantly by 2050.

The next public hearing on the project is tentatively scheduled for March 14, though a time and location have not been announced. The recommended plan, potential impacts on properties, and an analysis of where noise barriers are warranted are among the information that should be presented then.

Until then, “we will be working diligently to assemble the environmental document and move through some critical Federal Highway reviews of our traffic analysis and designs,” Riley said. “All this must be approved before we hold the public hearing in March.”

The leading plan, Alternative 2, would require an estimated 28.5 acres of right of way involving 98 properties, some of which are home to businesses, but no houses. Construction work on the road plan is anticipated in the spring or summer of 2024 and to finish in 2027 or 2028.

Meanwhile, information about the project can be found online at 526lcclongpoint.com, the project team can be emailed at [email protected], or contacted by regular mail to the attention of Joy Riley, PO Box 191, 955 Park St., Columbia SC 29202-0191.

Wando High School’s yearbook, Legend, lived up to its name with the recognition of Best Yearbook in South Carolina by the SC Scholastic Press Association. This marks the second year in a row Wando has claimed this title and the third time overall in the school’s history.

This year’s volume was themed “Something Within Us,” inspired by the trials and challenges Wando students faced being in school throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Co-editor for the 2022 yearbook, Lily Higgins, said she and her co-editors wanted to produce a yearbook that spotlighted the perseverance of Wando students.

“It’s something within us that took us apart and made us go through all these tribulations and come out better,” Higgins said. “What we have inside is what really strengthens us and brings us through tough times. It’s so much more than what is seen on the surface.”

Millie Rice, another co-editor of the 2022 volume, said last year’s staff was dedicated to making a memorable yearbook for Wando students to enjoy after enduring high school amid a public health crisis.

“A lot of the people had that mindset of if they were able to produce such an amazing thing during [the pandemic] then…we can produce something better because things are normal again,” Rice said. “Each person on staff wanted to make the best book.”

The Legend staff took home 12 individual awards. Wando earned more awards than any other competing yearbook in 2022 and won more first-place awards than any other yearbook in the state won total awards.

Clara Barresi, another co-editor for the award-winning yearbook, was also named a top-10 finalist for Designer of the Year by the National Scholastic Press Association. She is the 10th NSPA individual awards finalist in Legend history, and she has won more design awards than any past yearbook student.

Barresi was a designer on the yearbook staff for two years, and as one of three co-editors, she was heavily involved in the design and look of the yearbook.

“It was a way to have an outlet for my creativity throughout the school day,” Barresi said. “It taught me so much about graphic design and I just loved getting there, taking the theme and putting it into a digital asset and using all the different covers and templates.”

“The hard work of these young men and women continues to make me proud, and they continue to amaze me with their talent,” said Wando English teacher Phillip Caston who serves as the school’s yearbook adviser. “Each year, they strive to be even better than the year before, and being the absolute best in the business is their goal with all they do in producing this yearbook. They don’t just want to record Wando’s history; they want to do it with the finest quality of work.”

The following Legend staff members received SCSPA individual awards: