Socastee hopes experience during injury-plagued year pays off

Doug Illing stopped counting.

Week by week, and seemingly day by day, the Socastee coach saw his team lose players to injuries big and small. There were anterior cruciate ligament tears, sprained ankles, concussions, you name it.

By the end of the season, the Braves were a shell of the football team they walked into August with, and the results on the scoreboard most weeks showed it. Socastee lost nine games, its highest total since 2001, eight of those defeats coming by double digits.

“It’s frustrating because it’s stuff that you can’t control,” Illing said. “What you can control is the kids you have. You have to concentrate on the kids who were healthy. So it was a character-developing year for our kids. It was a growing year. We had a lot of kids get some experience who probably should have been playing some JV football.”

And there was the silver lining rolling into 2016.

Throughout a year in which as many as 11 starters were missing from a single game on numerous occasions – Illing didn’t try to add up the number of missed starts from the entire season – depth for the future was what Illing tried to concentrate on.

That’s even more important now. The Braves return 13 total starters from offense and defense, but with a roster that is smaller than some Class 3A programs (including local school Waccamaw), Socastee knows it is only a matter of time until backups are playing crucial minutes.

The reserves get nearly as much work as the starters, and convincing everyone that it’s best for the team didn’t take much convincing. After all, the returners saw or even experienced those blows firsthand.

“It’s a hard thing. Injuries do happen,” senior linebacker Zach Shear said. “It’s just the little things that can take you down. It’s hard. You get everyone ready for the season and then that happens.

“It makes us mad. That shouldn’t have happened at all. We want to show everybody in this community and this state that we were better than were.”

A bounce-back season is well within Socastee’s grasp.

In addition to Shear, the area’s leading tackler in 2015 in terms of stops per game, the Braves will again have quarterback Hunter Illing (Doug’s nephew) and tailback Malachi McClendon, a pair of players who accounted for roughly 60 percent of the team’s yards from scrimmage last year. In front of them will be 6-foot, 315-pound offensive lineman Jacob Necessary anchoring the offensive line.

And then there are those upcoming younger players who were forced into action.

“They were able to survive Friday nights and get that experience, the speed of the game under their belt,” Illing said. “You take it as a positive. You come into this year knowing they’ve been through that. They know what it takes now.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 11:30 PM with the headline "Socastee hopes experience during injury-plagued year pays off."