Mobile Home Sales in Darlington, SC

Kiyomi McMiller has made history with the Jordan Brand.

The post Kiyomi McMiller Becomes The First High School Athlete To Sign To The Jordan Brand appeared first on AfroTech.

According to a Nike news release, the Silver Spring, MD, native has signed a name, image, and likeness (NIL) deal with Jordan — making her the first high school athlete to join the shoe giant.

“I’m inspired by both of my parents. I get my creativity from my dad and my grandmother, which carries over to my dribbling,” McMiller shared in a press statement. “I’m always in the gym with my mom and dad working on my game. It’s a dream come true being with the brand that stands for the same passion that I have for the game. I look forward to encouraging basketball players to use their creativity and platform to define their purpose.”

The point guard is on the roster alongside Kiki Rice.

As previously reported by AfroTech, the UCLA Bruins star was the first college athlete to sign a NIL deal with the Jordan Brand.

Prior to her new NIL deal, McMiller has been a stellar hooper. She was previously at Trinity Collegiate School in Darlington, SC, and now, she’s at Life Center Academy in Burlington, NJ.

Per ESPN, the high schooler is No. 6 on the 2024 HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings – Super 60 list. What’s more, McMiller’s ball handling and scoring ability has led her to average 28 points per game, according to MaxPreps’ stats.

McMiller is in the process of narrowing down her options for which college to bring her talents to. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that she has over 40 offers and is looking to narrow it down to 25 options.

While McMiller’s collegiate future isn’t yet set in stone, as of this writing, she is certain when it comes to the type of player she wants to be known as.

“The greatest of all time, that’s really it,” McMiller told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Like when they think of me, I want them to be inspired to be creative and be their own player; just think outside the box.”

Like other Florida high school football coaches who’ve left for similar jobs in other states, the opportunity was too good for Eric Lodge to pass up.

Lodge joined the coaching exodus Thursday morning when he informed Sanford Seminole players that he’d accepted the head position at Berkeley High School in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

“It was very emotional,” Lodge said of the meeting. “I wanted them to hear it from me instead of from someone else.”

Lodge, 33, is in line for a substantial pay bump at his new school as Seminole County offers only $3,711 in supplemental pay to head football coaches, according to recent data compiled by FloridaCoaches.com.

That figure is more than football coaches earn in Orange ($3,162) and Lake ($3,632) counties and less than others in Osceola ($4,111) and Volusia ($4,011) counties.

It’s not uncommon for coaching salaries to exceed six figures in neighboring states such as Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

Berkeley, located roughly 35 miles northeast of Charleston, inherits a coach that went 32-5 the past three years with an undefeated season and FHSAA state championship win in 2020.

Lodge, a UCF graduate and Okeechobee native, previously coached under Don Stark at Seminole and Orlando University. He took over at Seminole three years ago when Stark left for a head coaching position at North Paulding High in Georgia.

Other Orlando area coaches who have left the state for better pay in recent years include West Orange’s Mike Granato (Georgia), Apopka’s Rick Darlington (Alabama), Oviedo’s Kolby Tackett (Tennessee) and East River’s Collin Drafts (South Carolina).

Darlington returned to Florida after the 2021 season to become head coach at DeLand. Drafts has served as Nease High head coach in Ponte Vedra since 2019.

“You build strong relationships with the community and the kids, and leaving those guys is something that really breaks my heart,” Lodge said. “The decision is really for the family and doing what’s best for my wife and two little girls. The opportunity was just too good to turn down.”

After guiding Ocoee to the state semifinals in his fifth season last fall, Aaron Sheppard has resigned as head coach of the Knights.

Sheppard made the announcement in a Twitter post Thursday morning. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Orlando Sentinel.

“These past 5 years have been nothing short of a movie here at Ocoee High School,” Sheppard’s post read in part. “This is a bittersweet moment and one of the toughest decisions that I have ever had to make. … I will always be grateful and thankful and a part of the Knight family.”

The Orlando area has seen 13 coaching changes so far this offseason among the 67 schools located in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake and southwest Volusia counties. There are currently four openings in Orange County.

Colonial was expected to hire a Seminole County assistant as its next head coach, but that process remains ongoing at the school district level.

Evans coach Kenard Lang stepped down from his position after two seasons early this month to become defensive line coach and run-game coordinator at North Carolina A&T.

Lake Nona lost Jason Robinson to a college job after only one season. Robinson announced Feb. 3 that he has taken over as offensive coordinator at Webber International.

Central Florida Christian, Deltona, Kissimmee Liberty and The Master’s Academy currently have head football coaching openings.

Leesburg, Oak Ridge, Umatilla and Orange City University have also made changes since the end of the 2022 season.

This article originally appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email J.C. Carnahan at jcarnahan@orlandosentinel.com.

Nucor Corp. announced in late February that its Towers & Structures business unit will build a new transmission tower production plant in Decatur, Alabama.

Nucor, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, says the new plant will be situated adjacent to the Nucor Steel Decatur 500,000-ton-per-year electric arc furnace (EAF) sheet steel mill and is the first of two new tower production factories the company plans to build.

“As America’s most diverse industrial manufacturer of steel products, we will be able to efficiently supply this new plant, helping to ensure that our nation’s critical energy and digital infrastructure is built with the cleanest, most sustainable steel in the world,” Nucor President and CEO Leon Topalian says.

Nucor’s steel-centric history (away from its mid-20^th century nuclear device testing activities) traces back to 1962, when the Nuclear Corp. of America acquired steel fabrication firm Vulcraft and hired a young executive named Ken Iverson to run it.

Seven years later, Iverson helped usher in Nucor’s steelmaking era when it opened its first EAF mill in Darlington, South Carolina. It was the first step down a path that saw Nucor bolster its EAF capacity not only so the descriptor “steelmaker” applied to the firm but until it became the largest steel producer in the United States.

In the ensuing half-century, Nucor built its EAF capacity from the initial Darlington melt shop to its current status of having shipped about 23 million tons of steel in 2022.

While Iverson, the executive team he assembled and succeeding CEOs have created an EAF steelmaking juggernaut (that continues to add capacity), the company never abandoned its steel fabrication roots. In the 21^st century in particular, Nucor has added to its fabrication business and invested in other vertical sectors, including raw materials and even energy.

In its 2022 results presentation to investors, Nucor refers to its EAF portfolio as its “core.” In the final quarter of last year, those mills shipped out more than 5.1 million tons of product. That compares with less than 1.6 million tons of raw materials (scrap and direct-reduced iron, or DRI) and nearly 1.2 million tons of steel products (such as joists and towers).

On the raw materials front, Nucor made its biggest splash for Recycling Today readers in 2008, when it purchased the Cincinnati-based David J. Joseph Co. (DJJ), which has processing facilities in several regions of the U.S. Nucor since has added to DJJ’s heft with several subsequent acquisitions.

Nucor’s additional presence in raw materials involves investments made in DRI production in Trinidad and Louisiana.

Nucor has been remarkably profitable at EAF steelmaking and, thus far, with its strategy to expand vertically. By championing EAF technology, Nucor was able to surpass the integrated, blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace steelmakers that dominated the sector in its early years.

However, Nucor’s assembly of assets—raw materials management, melt shops and galvanizing lines through to the production of towers or overhead doors—seemingly has brought it closer in appearance to those large integrated steel producers of late 19^th and early-to-mid 20^th century America.

With that comparison comes a note of caution from none other than Iverson, who died in 2002. In a 1999 interview with the University of North Carolina, he said, “I never had a lot of respect for the big integrated steel industries. They were inflexible. They certainly weren’t a cultural pack that I wanted Nucor to follow.”

Iverson did not identify vertical integration or scale as a criticism; rather, he mentioned complacency. “Our steel industry became very complacent,” he said. “They had had great success during World War II. They were not acceptable to new ideas. They were reluctant to adopt any new ideas.”

By that measure, Nucor may appear to be heading down a path that in some ways mirrors those of the integrated steelmakers of the mid-20^th century, yet could be very different.

Per its recent balance sheets, Nucor has little to worry about. Any concern it has may come with the territory when a former David becomes Goliath. Recalling the landscape in the 1960s—when David was ready to strike—Iverson said in his 1999 interview, “There were just all sorts of opportunities for new companies to develop [and] to accept new ideas in the steel industries.”

Gauged by the number and variety of its recent investments, Nucor does not seem ready to relinquish the battle of new ideas to its competitors.

FLORENCE – Counties in South Carolina’s northeastern region reported more than 1 billion dollars in new investment with over 2,400 jobs created.

“This has been a monumental year of announcements, job creation and developing projects for our region,” said Yancey McGill, a former S.C. lieutenant governor and North Eastern Strategic Alliance (NESA) executive committee chairman, “We are excited to see the amazing opportunities these announcements provide and the high potential for further growth and development.”

According to NESA – the non-profit regional economic development group serving Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Georgetown, Horry, Marion, Marlboro and Williamsburg counties – the region had a record year with over $1.106 billion in new investment in 2022, as well as the creation of 2,440 jobs.

The regional unemployment rate was 3.8% as of December 2022. The lowest recorded unemployment rate for the year was in April at 3.2% and the highest was in February at 5.2%. Up until October 2022, the region averaged around 320 initial unemployment claims per week and a total of 13,471 claims were made. Employment in the NESA region at the end of December was at 316,088 which represented a 0.6% increase from December 2019.

Regionally, there were 15 announcements: seven were existing industry expansions and eight were new locations.

“There were many exciting announcements throughout the year in 2022,” McGill said. “We want to congratulate and commend each of these companies for making investments in our communities. To everyone, particularly the economic developers and county leaders, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring these projects to fruition, we want to thank each and every one of you.”

“We are thrilled to welcome companies like Envision AESC and DC Blox that are bringing cutting-edge technology to the state of South Carolina and the NESA region,” McGill said. “Each company that either expanded or announced new investment are recognizing the opportunities here and the value of our hardworking people.”

Looking forward, McGill said he is optimistic about the year ahead.

“We will continue to proactively work with county economic developers, allied partners and entities at the state level to promote product development in the region,” he said. “We will continue to employ strategic recruiting initiatives and stay fully engaged to support each of our counties’ economic development efforts.”

McGill noted that the NESA staff provide tools to make it easier for searching and virtually touring available sites in the region. All of these tools, along with NESA’s 2022 Annual Report, can be found at nesasc.org. NESA had their annual meeting on February 9, 2023.

Williamsburg County updates and outlooks:

Population: 31,279

Unemployment rate: 5.3%

Average annual wages: $45,062

GDP: $679,602,000

2022 in review:

Hemingway Sewing Solutions, a textile products manufacturer, announced its plans to establish operations in Hemingway, S.C. in early 2022. The company’s $3.3 million investment will create 242 jobs.

Additionally, construction of the MUSC Health Black River Medical Center in Cades, S.C. was completed with diagnostic and treatment options that include CT, MRI, nuclear medicine and mammography.

The county also started construction on a 52,000-square-foot speculative building in the Williamsburg Cooperative Commerce Centre South, located on U.S. Highway 52 in Kingstree, S.C.

2023 expectations:

Moving forward, the Williamsburg County Economic Development Board will focus its efforts on expanding the county transit system to further aid local industry. The county is also managing several active projects with prospects from various sectors.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) is investigating a cluster of Legionnaires’ disease cases in Darlington County. To date, 13 people have been identified as part of this cluster.

Legionnaires’ disease is a pneumonia caused by the bacteria Legionella and includes symptoms of fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath and muscle aches. People can get sick from Legionella by breathing in small particles of water containing the bacteria. Legionella is not spread from person to person.

“The risk of Legionnaires’ disease among residents of Darlington is low,” said Dr. Abdoulaye Diedhiou, director of DHEC’s Division of Acute Disease Epidemiology. “Most people exposed to Legionella do not develop Legionnaires’ disease.”

People over the age of 50, especially those who smoke cigarettes and those with weakened immune systems, chronic lung disease or other chronic health conditions are at increased risk for Legionnaires’ disease.Those at higher risk of getting a severe infection should seek medical care early if they have the above symptoms. Health care providers should test for other causes of respiratory illness, including influenza, COVID-19, RSV and others as appropriate. Pneumonia caused by Legionella is treatable with antibiotics.

DHEC’s investigation includes efforts to determine the source of the disease cluster in the community. Investigations into these types of Legionnaires’ clusters are complex. It is often not possible to determine the origin of the bacteria that infected people. Water from cooling towers, hot tubs, misters, decorative fountains and plumbing systems are possible sources of infection.

“We are actively investigating all potential sources,” Diedhiou said.

People concerned about their risk can protect themselves by avoiding breathing in water mists from human-made water systems. Everyone is encouraged to seek medical attention if they begin having symptoms of pneumonia.

For more information about Legionnaires’ disease, please visit the CDC Legionella webpage. Health care providers are also encouraged to read the DHEC Health Advisory regarding this cluster.

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