Socastee’s Hampton Campbell (left) watches as the Lady Braves defeat River Bluff on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. Photo by Janet Morgan/janet.morgan@myhorrynews.com
Socastee’s Hampton Campbell (left) watches as the Lady Braves defeat River Bluff on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. Photo by Janet Morgan/janet.morgan@myhorrynews.com
The layover sticker that will be added to Socastee’s basketball court later this year will be much more than some plastic and some adhesive.
On Monday, the Horry County Board of Education approved the Braves’ request to rename its hoops floor “Coach D Court” after longtime boys basketball coach and Beach Ball Classic founder Dan D’Antoni. The school will be working with a local company and the former coach to design and approve logos to be added to the flooring sometime this fall prior to the start of the 2022-2023 basketball season.
“With how significant the Beach Ball Classic was and the region championships and all he did for basketball in Horry County, it made sense to honor him,” Socastee Athletics Director Josh Vinson said.
D’Antoni’s Socastee teams won 524 games, 12 region championships and eight region tournament championships. The Braves made the playoffs 21 times during his tenure, made three lower state finals and one state championship game appearance.
He was also the founder of the Beach Ball Classic basketball tournament, which in 1981 launched as an eight-team event before growing into a relative monster that helped shape not only the Myrtle Beach area sports scene but high school basketball nationwide.
D’Antoni left the Socastee program in 2005 to join his brother, Mike, on the staff of the Phoenix Suns (and eventually the same job with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers). He has been the head men’s coach at Marshall since 2014.
For starters, the logo will be in the form of a court layover, the high-end stickers that are frequently used on floors during tournaments. The court was refurbished three years ago. After it’s next touch-up, the logos will be painted onto the floor.
Vinson is working with D’Antoni to arrange a date for the official unveiling. At that time, the athletics director hopes to have many of the coach’s former players join him for the event.
The court re-naming is the next step in a massive branding and performance overhaul for the school’s athletics programs. The multi-use football, soccer, lacrosse and track stadium is currently a little over halfway done with a project that will include a synthetic surface, new track and bleachers. New stands were added for the baseball and softball fields. The weight room was recently renovated, and several programs received new jerseys.
“Not that there isn’t always pride in Socastee, because this community’s always been good to us, but there’s a buzz in the air,” Vinson said. “Not all of that is the bulldozers.
“Every program is part of this.”
PRE-SPRING BREAK PUSH ON TAP
While the Aynor softball team and the rest of Horry County diamond sports are still a little over a week away from spring break, the push to secure postseason seeding is already well underway for Tony Mills’ squad.
Gone are the days of waiting until after the mid-semester hiatus to not only put things in motion but to start locking up quality playoff footing.
“We preach it from day one,” said Mills, the Blue Jackets coach. “What we tell our kids early on is if we don’t win the region or get eliminated in the playoffs, it will happen because of what we’re not good at. People talk about that most important game being the next game. And it is. But you have to be consistent. If you slip up early in the season and lose a game or lose two games, you could be eliminated from contention very early.”
That’s because even a No. 2 seed in the playoffs can make a baseball or softball team’s chance of making it through the district round that much tougher. The postseason format, after some tweaks during the 2021 pandemic-shortened season, will return to its old bracket settings. Four teams will be assigned to each of the eight district tournaments, followed by the lower state and upper state four-team tournaments and then the state finals.
No. 1 seeds stay at home throughout their district tournaments as long as they remain unbeaten, and there is a scenario where a team like Aynor softball could stay there for all but one game throughout the lower state tournament should it continue to win as a No. 1 seed.
Needless to say, putting the pedal to the metal now is crucial in setting up the possibility.
The Blue Jackets (8-2 overall, 3-0 in Region VII-3A) are a Tuesday victory at Waccamaw away from sweeping their way through the first half of region play. Aynor blew out Loris and Georgetown and got a no-hitter from freshman Maddie Johnson in a 1-0 victory against Dillon. If everything goes as expected in the next 10 days, the Blue Jackets could lock up that No 1 seed as early as April 19, the first region game after Spring Break.
Similar scenarios exist for St. James softball, Aynor baseball and Green Sea Floyds baseball, all teams that have started hot in their respective regions.
Contact Charles D. Perry at 843-488-7236
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