Mobile Home Sales in Aynor, SC

AYNOR — The Aynor High School softball team may have been young this year, but that didn’t stop it from getting close to winning a state title.

The Blue Jackets were one win away from claiming the Class AAA state championship, falling to Broome in Game 3 of the best-of-three championship series, 6-0, on May 27.

After losing starting pitcher Kennedy Ellis, who now plays for Coastal Carolina, and catcher Peyton Rabon, who now calls Erskine home, from last year’s team, a relatively inexperienced squad was not expected to reach the heights that it did in 2021.

The 2022 edition of Aynor softball only had two seniors in the fold, centerfielder Carly Sarvis and first baseman Ann Shelley.

However, many of the team’s young players stepped up in a big way for the Blue Jackets. Head coach Tony Mills noticed the drive his team had as far back as the preseason.

“It might sound silly, but our goal was not necessarily to win the Pee Dee Pitch-Off,” Mills said. “Our goal was to get as many kids as much experience as possible, try to put them in pressure situations and see who’s going to respond. The team kind of grew up a little bit, believe it or not, that early in the season during a preseason tournament.”

Aynor would go on to finish the season with a 23-5 record, winning Region 7-AAA with a 7-1 league mark. The Blue Jackets went on to win their district round followed by lower state to give themselves a date with Broome in the championship series.

A lot of Aynor’s success had to do with its pitching, and its pitching staff was comprised of eighth-grader Alivia Hess and freshmen Maddie Johnson and Alaina Brown. Replacing Rabon at catcher was Kolten Ray, who previously had no varsity experience.

Hess came up huge for Aynor on the mound in Game 2 of the championship series on the road at Broome, leading the Blue Jackets to a 2-1 victory to force Game 3 after Aynor lost Game 1 at home, 7-0..

“I think Broome may have only lost one game at home all year,” Mills said. “(Broome had) probably the biggest crowd I’ve ever coached in front of before. ... To put an eighth-grader on the mound and for her to throw seven innings for you was just phenomenal.”

Aynor’s title hopes came to an end with a 6-0 loss to Broome in Game 3 at Gilbert High School, but with a lot of its talent coming back next season, there’s a high probability the Blue Jackets will make another run.

However, Mills doesn’t want to put too much pressure on his team to win a title in 2023. After Aynor won the state championship in 2015, Mills was promoted to head coach to replace Sandie Jones. Mills was previously the head coach of the JV softball team.

Mills said that in 2016, he put too much emphasis on repeating as state champion and the team fell short. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake again.

“This coming year, as we approach next year, we’re not going to talk about the state championship, we’re not talking about winning a region championship, we’re not going to talk about going to the lower state,” Mills said. “Next year’s team is no wins and no losses on day one. It’s a new team. We’ve lost Carly (and) we’ve lost Ann, so it’s not the same team. So this team’s going to have to go out and blaze their own path next year.”

Overcrowding in Carolina Forest and replacing an older school building on the South Strand rank highest on the Horry County Board of Education's five-year priority list.

During a nearly three-hour meeting Monday, board members discussed their priorities for the coming years with the help of facilitator Peggy Torrey.

“We’ll be coming back to the board with that, and obviously there’s always the option for discussion and modification,” said Horry County Schools (HCS) Superintendent Rick Maxey.

Building two new elementary schools in the Carolina Forest area and replacing St. James Elementary School remain the top priorities for the board over the next five years.

Other projects that made the list include renovating Carolina Forest High, Myrtle Beach High, Aynor High and Daisy Elementary, as well as completing the upgrades to some school tennis facilities.

The tennis facilities in the $4.6 million project include Aynor High, St. James High, Socastee High and North Myrtle Beach High.

The votes to put the new Carolina Forest elementary schools at the top of the list were unanimous, and the votes to put replacing St. James Elementary next came from eight of the 11 districts.

They took into consideration the recent district assessment of the conditions of all of the schools, as well as the growth and expected capacity changes and the recent athletic master plan.

It is estimated that the two new Carolina Forest elementary schools will cost $64 million each, and the replacement of St. James Elementary School could cost approximately $66 million.

Some other projects that were under consideration for the five-year plan but didn’t make it to the Top 10 included additions to Carolina Forest High School, the possibility of a completely new high school for the Carolina Forest area, replacing Conway Education Center and replacing South Conway Elementary School.

“Carolina Forest High School is 28 years old and has never had a major HVAC renovation,” said HCS Director of Planning Joe Burch, noting that most of the $33 million renovation cost would be HVAC and ductwork.

Burch did acknowledge that both St. James Elementary and South Conway Elementary have been on the replacement project list since 2015.

South Conway Elementary’s replacement would need to coincide with the building of the new Conway bypass. That's because the property for the school sits off Hemingway Chapel Road and is adjacent to the road project. Burch said the road project may not begin for a few more years.

Due to its property being only about nine acres, Burch said SCES needed to be a candidate for replacement because there wouldn’t be room on the property to use modular classrooms during major renovations.

Revisiting their school capacity discussion from the winter, Burch said River Oaks Elementary, Carolina Forest Elementary and Ocean Bay Elementary are all over capacity and right now 72 modular classrooms are spread among these three campuses.

“That’s almost enough for two new schools,” Burch said.

By 2027, Carolina Forest High will reach 149% capacity, and the school is only built for roughly 2,500 students, Burch said.

“We’re going to have to deal with that in some way,” he said.

When a small community theater in Market Common disbanded toward the end of last year, local Myrtle Beach actress Kathy Kenney lost a family.

Kenney moved to the area with her late husband and has been doing shows ever since retiring from her job. When the Stage Left Theater Company ended, she said she felt like she had lost access to a tight-knit group of friends.

“It was like a part of my life went away,” she said.

Stage Left Theatre Company, which began in 2009, had become a staple to locals. It held its last show June 26 before disbanding due to an increase in rent in the Market Common shopping center, Kenney said.

She watched the 52-seat theater get slowly torn down and replaced by Nailed It, a DIY arts and crafts studio.

“It was very odd to see that happen,” Kenney said.

Other former members of the Stage Left Theatre Company felt a similar sadness.

In January, some of those members came up with a solution.

Steve Marriott, Brian Koons, Katie Geall and Vaughn Cox, all former performers, had finally found a place to start a new group — the Open Curtain Theatre.

Located in the side section of the members club Moose Lodge, on Burcale Road, Open Curtain Theatre is preparing for an April showing of “Curtains Up!”, a farce comedy with an all-female cast of five.

Kenney, who plays a character named Betty in the show, said she hopes to see Open Curtain Theatre “take off and become popular.”

Performances for “Curtains up!” will be held every night from April 13 to April 23. The theater holds 75 seats for each show.

Tickets are $25 each, but with an $80 seasonal pass, you can get one ticket to each of the four remaining shows. Tickets can be purchased on the theater’s website.

In February, the group performed “California Suite” and was able to sell out two shows. According to Koons, one of the founders, one show in April is expected to sell out as well.

For founder Steve Marriott, the plan is to stay focused, get the basics right, and do things differently than tourist traps.

“This gives something the locals can go to that they can call their own,” he said.

Marriott said he would like to eventually find a space of their own in the future, and experiment with other entertainment, such as a dinner theater night or a game show night.

Currently, Moose Lodge is able to provide customers with alcohol, drinks and snacks. You don’t need to be a member in order to purchase a ticket, however.

It’s also important for the group to make a connection to the community.

At the “California Suite” showing in February, the theater was able to use furniture from Connie’s New To You, a secondhand furniture store in Conway. Afterwards, several ticket holders called the store asking about pieces, according to set designer Katie Geall.

“We are reaching the community,” she said.

The group has three other shows in its 2023 line up, including “True West,” which will play June 13 to 25, and “The 39 Steps,” which will play Sept. 7 to 18.

Breaking the news that one of his games had been canceled wasn’t easy for Aynor coach Jason Allen.

Making sure the Blue Jackets didn’t overdo it while champing at the bit was harder.

While some area teams will be lining up for their fourth game on Friday, Allen and his bunch will be playing just their second game of 2022. Thanks to a forfeit on Aug. 26 and then the pre-scheduled idle week last Friday, Aynor is a full two games behind every other program in Horry County.

“We had to maximize our time,” Allen said. “You can beat yourself up if you’re not careful.”

For Allen, the time off was shades of the COVID-19 quarantines, although, at least the Blue Jackets were allowed to practice. That part was in many ways a blessing after the team’s Week 0 loss to Wilson.

It was during that game that the coaching staff decided it needed to taper off some of the playbook expansion that happened in the spring and summer. The last two weeks, then, the Blue Jackets took sort of a get-back-to-basics approach.

The team will get to see how well the strategy works at home on Friday against Lakewood, another class 3A program with high hopes for not only a playoff berth, but decent seeding that could prompt some postseason success.

Thanks to the Kingstree forfeit, Aynor lost one of its five regular-season home games this fall. That means outside of a small number of seniors who played as freshmen, the vast majority of the current Blue Jackets will have never had a full slate of games on their own field, after both the 2020 and 2021 seasons were shortened due to the pandemic.

Instead, Aynor will play at home this week and then won't return until the Oct. 14 region contest against Waccamaw.

The silver lining, as Allen put it, was that Kingstree did agree to flip its 2023 game to Aynor. It allowed the teams to negate a mid-four-figure penalty for the Blazers’ canceling the game.

That move was made after Kingstree was involved in an on-field incident toward the end of its loss to Manning on Aug. 20. The Blazers was going to be without more than half of its varsity roster for the game against Aynor.

It was an automatic win for the Blue Jackets, although that was of little matter for a team trying to get better.

Throughout the layoff, Aynor found a new practice formula. The Blue Jackets used Mondays and Thursdays as lighter days, went more involved on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then gave players the day off on Fridays.

With no more idle weeks, that won’t be the case until after the end of the season.

LIGHT TRAVEL WEEK

In a season full of significant mileage being put on Horry County Schools buses, this Friday will take some of the strain off those with CDLs.

While Carolina Forest will head to South Florence and St. James will play at Lake City, those will be the only two teams who are traveling out of the county this week. It’s a far cry from what half of the weeks of non-region play presented.

In Week 1, Carolina Forest traveled to Summerville, Green Sea Floyds to Johnsonville and St. James to Philip Simmons. Last Friday, teams from the district were playing in Charleston (Carolina Forest), Summerville (Conway), Tabor City (Loris), Shallotte (North Myrtle Beach) and Florence (Socastee. Next week, two more teams, Aynor and St. James, will again be making their way to the Charleston area, when they will play Philip Simmons and Ashley Ridge, respectively.

On the flip side of that, many of the county’s teams will avoid significant travel for non-region games in 2023. St. James will still have to play at Stratford, Socastee will play at Silver Bluff, Carolina Forest will travel to West Brunswick and Aynor will play at Lakewood. However, every other non-region contest will be played along the Grand Strand or in the Pee Dee.

THIS WEEK’S SCHEDULE

Kingstree (0-3) at Green Sea Floyds (1-2)

Lakewood (2-1) at Aynor (1-1)

North Myrtle Beach (1-2) at Conway (1-2)

Carolina Forest (1-2) at South Florence (3-0)

St. James (2-1) at Lake City (2-1)

Myrtle Beach (1-2) at Socastee (2-1)

Daniel Stanley is just one of those ‘dudes’ every football team needs to win games.

Stanley had 219 yards of total offense, ran for a touchdown, threw for another and added an interception in the fourth quarter to lead Aynor past Philip Simmons, 52-31, Friday night at Philip Simmons High School.

The 6-0, 175-pound Stanley, who rushed for a game-high 173 yards, rarely comes out of the game for the Blue Jackets.

“Daniel is a dude,” said Aynor coach Jason Allen. “Daniel has been an amazing player for us. It’s an honor to coach a kid like him and we cherish every second we get with him. We try to spell him some on offense, but he’s out there most of the night.”

The Blue Jackets (3-1) ran their throw back single-wing offense to near perfection, rolling up 452 yards of total offense, including 406 yards on the ground.

“That’s our style of football and anytime we can make the other team play our style it’s beneficial to us,” Allen said. “We do what we do. All you have to do is look up 1930 single wing offense on the internet and that’s what we run. It’s like bell bottoms, it never goes out of style. The kids believe in it. We hang our hats on it.”

Trying to replicate what the Blue Jackets do offensively is a challenge for any opponent.

“We knew it was going to be a slugfest,” said Philip Simmons coach Eric Bendig. “Aynor is really well coached, they run what they run and we didn’t stop it. We tried all week with the scout team to duplicate what they do, but it’s nothing like we’re used to seeing.”

The loss overshadowed an excellent performance from Philip Simmons quarterback Tavien Orellana. Orellana completed 13 of 26 passes for 179 yards and 2 TDs. He had two TD passes called back for penalties.

“He’s only a sophomore and he’s doing an unbelievable job for us,” Bendig said. “This is his fifth game with us and he’s got a really bright future. We knew throwing the ball was probably going to be our bread and butter. I wish we could have run the ball a little more consistently.”

Aynor held a 22-10 lead at halftime and went up 30-10 on Rivers Johnson’s 12-yard TD run to open the second half. Johnson finished the game with two TDs.

The Iron Horses (3-2) answered when Orellana scored on a 2-yard run and then threw a 43-yard TD pass to Troy Stevenson in the third quarter.

After another Blue Jackets TD, Orellana pulled the Iron Horses within a TD on a 16-yard TD pass to Riley Beard to make it 38-31 with 9:34 to play in the game.

But would be as close as the Iron Horses would get.