High school league pushes playoffs back a week statewide

The South Carolina High School League announced Tuesday afternoon that it would delay the start of the football playoffs statewide one week.

The decision wasn’t made fast enough to immediately help the six area schools playing catch-up after last week’s storms and ensuing flooding. North Myrtle Beach-Georgetown, Waccamaw-Loris and Green Sea Floyds-Carvers Bay were left on Tuesday’s schedule. The three Georgetown County teams in that mix had one day of practice on Monday to prepare, and each of them, as well as their opponents, entered the day believing they were facing a two-games-in-one-week scenario.

“If they would have told us (Monday), we wouldn’t be playing right now,” Georgetown coach Bradley Adams said shortly before kickoff Tuesday. “But we didn’t know anything about it.”

Adams said he was informed of the SCHSL decision around 2 p.m., four hours prior to kickoff against the Chiefs. Although there would have been financial and logistical problems with postponing it that quickly, Adams said he brought his players together and asked them their opinion.

They elected to play.

The announcement, North Myrtle Beach coach Blair Hardin agreed, would have benefited both schools had it been made Monday or even last week.

“I found out as I was walking out of the pregame meal,” he said. “I wished they would have made it earlier to help out Georgetown County Schools. They’ve obviously had a tragedy here and have been limited with all of their sports. It would have helped them to make the decision earlier.”

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 6:15 PM with the headline "High school league pushes playoffs back a week statewide."