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Before a Friday night football game, Gilbert player Bryson Butler carries the American flag onto the field.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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The Gilbert High football coaches and players pause for a moment of prayer prior to a Friday night kickoff.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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The crowd at Bamberg-Ehrhardt High’s homecoming game is ready to see some action.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Ellie Snelling, 4, cheers on Gilbert High, where her father is an assistant coach.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Wayne Ricard, former president of the booster club, says of the team’s early days, “The community was always bought in. The whole team played with a lot of heart and guts.”
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Bamberg-Ehrhardt High cheerleaders energize the night.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Stanley Ross, a former Red Raider player and 1980 grad, was and still is inspired by the community’s support.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Friends from the Class of 1984 arrive at the tailgate in style.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
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Abbeville’s game captains raise their helmets before the coin flip.
Photo by Thomas Hammond
The gauntlet of signs and posters at a Gilbert High School football game can blur into a mess of red and black letters. But one large, simple display is hard to miss. On a long, white board in black letters, “Gilbert America” juts into the skyline above the visitors’ stands. With just two words, this town of fewer than 600 residents declares an independence.
The message is about pride and community. And like many small towns in the South, it’s the local high school football team that carries the banner.
“It’s one town, one school and one team, so it’s easy for people to get behind that,” says Chad Leaphart, a former Gilbert High football player and head coach who’s now the athletics director for Lexington County School District One. “It’s a blue-collar town with no stoplights, where people get to come out and support each other on Friday night.”
What happens on Friday nights in the fall is important, not only to the people of Gilbert but also to those in Abbeville, Bamberg and dozens of other close-knit communities across South Carolina. Their high school football teams’ gridiron glory, both past and present, bonds them to their neighbors and seals their towns’ proud identities.
“It’s the lifeline of the community, the heartbeat of the community,” Abbeville City Councilman Benji Greeson says. “No matter who you are or what side of the tracks you’re from, you’re a Panther. It’s family, and that’s part of the rallying point.”
For Justin Bamberg, a state lawmaker and an alum of Bamberg-Ehrhardt High, a Friday night under the lights is the best way to end the week.
“Athletics in general, but particularly football here, is one of those things that brings everybody together,” he says. “You can forget about your day-to-day drama and come out and cheer on these kids. It’s a vital organ of the community.”
Pick it up and go
Wayne Ricard wanted to play football, but in 1970, Gilbert High was a few years from restarting its program.
Even when the Indians returned to the field in 1972, Gilbert players and fans still had to travel 9 miles to Lexington High’s stadium, where they shared a “homefield.”
By the mid-’80s, Ricard was president of his alma mater’s booster club, and legendary coach Marty Woolbright had begun building a football program that reflected Gilbert.
“The community was always bought in,” says Ricard. “When Marty got here, it really took off. The whole team played with a lot of heart and guts, and half the time they were winning games they weren’t supposed to. We knew we had to do better for our kids.”
Without any financial commitment from their school district, the people of Gilbert raised nearly $300,000 to build their own stadium. They held raffles, sold barbecue and had benefit shows featuring iconic Southern comedian Jerry Clower. As they closed in on their goal, the school district contributed the remaining funds for the stadium’s lighting.
“Pick it up and go, that’s what we did,” says Ricard. “It was a collaboration of a lot of hardworking, good people.”
At its completion in 1988, Gilbert High’s Tomahawk Stadium was the first in the district with aluminum seats, concrete light poles and accessible seating. The stadium’s inaugural game was a 50-0 Gilbert victory over Cardinal Newman School.
“I think that shows you the type of community this is,” says Leaphart, who was on the field as a freshman that night. “They were relentless for two years raising money, so they took a lot of pride in that stadium.”
That pride hasn’t wavered.
“I think one of the coolest things coming up as a player was that everyone knew who you were,” says Leaphart, who surpassed Woolbright as the school’s all-time wins leader. “When I got the opportunity to come back and coach, I wanted my boys to feel that. The town loves the game so much.”
They know football here
There’s tailgating, and then there’s what happens at Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School’s homecoming game.
In a small parking lot between the field house and Leon Maxwell Stadium—named after the coach who led the Red Raiders to five lower-state championships and one state title—savory smoke wafts from a multitude of cookers and grills. A DJ leads a dance party with a playlist that can evoke teenage memories and dance moves from any of the past six decades.
Alumni who aren’t dancing, or are too busy rotating chicken wings, are catching up and swapping stories, many of which took place on the nearby fields.
“You can see the camaraderie we have here. We all come together as a family,” says Stanley Ross, a 1980 graduate who played on the offensive and defensive lines for the Red Raiders. “The people love football, and they know football around here.”
The school, always in one of the smaller-school classifications, boasts three players who rose to the National Football League—Da’Quan Bowers, Ricky Sapp and A.J. Cann.
There is no argument over the important role school athletics plays there.
“It’s not even a win or lose type of thing,” says Bamberg, the state House member who graduated from Bamberg-Ehrhardt in 2005. “It’s more about rooting the boys on. Everybody watches them grow up. There is an element of life out here that you want to keep the youth out of. Sports is a good way to do it.”
That nurturing support has a legacy as long and rich as the school’s winning traditions. Ross recalls the summer Maxwell took the team to Winthrop University for a weeklong camp to prepare for the upcoming season.
“Our community took care of us for that whole week—our travel, three meals a day, matching sweatsuits and short sets—and we didn’t have to pay one penny. I still think about what a good, tight community we have that really supports us.”
The “A” in you
If you don’t know about Abbeville High School’s storied football program or the passion of its fans, a not-so-subtle introduction greets you along state Highway 72 heading into town.
Standing on Ronald Creswell’s well-kept front yard, high enough for anyone coming from Greenwood or Ninety Six to see, is an 8-by-4-foot sign displaying each of the 13 seasons the Panthers have claimed a state championship.
The sign was originally under the scoreboard at the school’s football stadium. When a new official display was created five years ago, Creswell asked Panthers head coach Jamie Nickles if he could have the original sign.
“I told him that I’m going to put it in my yard; that’s the best place for it,” Creswell recounts. “I put it up for the city. I put it up for Abbeville. Ever since, man, everybody loves it.”
Creswell is a loyal and longtime Abbeville High supporter, but a 45-year career as a truck driver meant he spent most Friday nights listening to WZLA, a 6,000-watt FM radio station that has broadcast Abbeville High football games since 1992.
In a town such as Abbeville, most people are either at the game or tuned in.
“You can roll the sidewalks up on a Friday night,” says Greeson, the city councilman who’s also the station’s owner and color commentator on those broadcasts. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a championship game or a game that they are favored by 30 points. It’s a family tradition for folks around here.”
After state championship victories—nine in the last 16 seasons—fans return from the neutral-site games to the city’s historic downtown square and await the arrival of their victors. Their most recent title game—a 58-20 win over Cross last year in Orangeburg—ended late on a Thursday night, and Greeson wondered if the community would celebrate with the same fervor.
“It’s not like this was our first championship in 25 years,” says Greeson. “It was 1:30 on Friday morning. But the square was packed with more than 500 people. They were cheering, flashing their lights, honking their horns and shooting fireworks over downtown. It was an awesome scene. It gave me goose bumps.”
Greeson acknowledges that Abbeville’s success makes Panthers football an easy team to embrace, but he’s never seen the support waver.
“We’ve had rebuilding years, but the fans never quit showing up,” he says. “The thing that we like to say around here is that the ‘A’ is not on you, it’s in you.”