On Your Mark: Keep high school action in mind as college football gears up

If you’ve been following along with our coverage changes during the first few weeks of high school football season, there’s a good chance you’ve already inferred what I’m about to say next: The rest of our high school coverage will follow the same mold.

As we’ve stated before, high school coverage is a deadline issue, which is also true for the other fall sports (cross country, swimming, girls tennis, girls golf and volleyball). That said, and at the risk of sounding repetitive, that coverage is simply moving online. And again, by moving online there will be more time and opportunity to break out stories from around the area that were lost in the print-first world of the past.

If you’ve been following along with our high school football wrapup packages, or our weekly Pelicans recap, expect to see similar treatment for non-football high school action. Area schools are just beginning the meat of their schedules – despite weather slowing down area tennis teams – so expect to see that package in the coming weeks. And I’ll make sure to let you know when we have an official launch date.

All that said, to really enhance our coverage, we need contributions from area coaches and teams; we can’t cover every game. Every night we take area scores by email and phone, which is how we build our daily roundup. Those calls are also a major pipeline for feature ideas as the season progresses.

So coaches, don’t take the jump to online coverage as a reason not to call, look at it as an opportunity to enhance what we’re able to provide you and our readership. The sports line is manned every night at 843-443-2420. If you don’t get through initially, we’re not ignoring you, but as customer service lines always seem to say: “All representatives are currently on other lines.” If that’s the case, please wait a few minutes and try back again.

If you can’t find the time to call, feel free to email results to sports@thesunnews.com, although we’d like to talk and ask questions, so calls are preferred. And finally, if possible, try to get first names for everyone from both teams, statistics and records. Thanks in advance!

Are you ready for some football?

Yes – the answer is yes. If you’ve been looking forward to the start of the 2015 college football season, I hope you cleared your schedule.

▪ For the first week of the season the action is beginning a bit earlier, and the battle of the Carolinas will be a big part of that. Led by Connor Mitch at quarterback, South Carolina faces off with North Carolina at Bank of America stadium in Charlotte on Thursday at 6 p.m. (ESPN).

Games will continue throughout the weekend, and culminate on Monday when preseason No. 1 and defending champion Ohio State faces off with Virginia Tech at 8 p.m. (ESPN).

▪ Led by the preseason ACC Player of the Year in sophomore quarterback Deshaun Watson, No. 12 Clemson has a traditional Saturday start as it hosts South Carolina foe Wofford at 12:30 p.m. (WWMB and ESPN3).

▪ While the FCS season kicked off this past weekend – highlighted by a stunning upset of No. 1 North Dakota State by No. 12 Montana – No. 5 Coastal Carolina officially begins this week as it travels to Furman for a 6 p.m. start on Saturday. If you can’t make it out to Greenville, the game will be streamed on ESPN’s web service, ESPN3.

Of note

Follow along in The Sun News and at MyrtleBeachOnline.com all week as we document the 2015 Myrtle Beach World Amateur, played at courses all around the area. According to the World Am’s official website, 3,338 have registered for the event, which begins Monday and runs through Friday. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place Friday at 3 p.m. … The Myrtle Beach Pelicans are fighting for the second half title in the Carolina League’s Southern Division, currently sitting behind Winston-Salem, but they’ll play the final seven games of the regular season on the road. This week they’ll have a three-game series at Potomac, before finishing up with a four-game set at Wilmington. The regular season ends on Monday, Sept. 7. Don’t fret, though, the Pelicans have earned home games during the opening playoff series, beginning on Thursday, Sept. 10, by virtue of their first half title. If Myrtle Beach can take the second half, it will the opportunity to host all of the first-round’s three-game set.

This story was originally published August 30, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "On Your Mark: Keep high school action in mind as college football gears up."