Bobcat Football to face formidable opposition
The stars of this year’s Bluffton High School football team were toddlers the last time The Den was this hostile. It was 2010, and Ken Cribb had assembled a machine that was churning up yards and lighting up scoreboards all the way to the Lower State finals.
Myrtle Beach had to come to the Lowco. It was David vs. Goliath.
Coaches, players, and fans from around the region ascended on Bluffton to see if it would be the night that marked the Lowco’s arrival as a major player in the Palmetto State football scene.
We weren’t ready.
Led by Notre Dame commit Everett Golson, who would be playing in the college football national championship game a short time later, the Seahawks shredded Cribb’s Bobcats 47-0, tossing around our proven champions like so many ragdolls.
A year later, those same Bobcats crossed another threshold and reached the Class 3A state championship game, putting up a much better fight before falling short 42-27 to South Pointe.
It would be 10 years before the Lowco was represented again in the SCHSL state finals, with South Pointe again spoiling the party, this time at the expense of Beaufort High. The Eagles dropped to Class 3A the following year and won it all, bringing the watershed moment the Bobcats nearly delivered a decade earlier.
Could this Bluffton team be the next drop in the bucket for a region starved for statewide success on the football field?
The pieces are all there.
The Bobcats were already a team to watch due to a high-powered offense with big-time quarterback Aedan McCarthy and North Carolina-commited receiver Carnell Warrren returning along with running back Kordell Holley and sneaky receiver Roman Benjamin, but the rich got richer when standout junior receiver Amare Patterson announced his transfer from Beaufort High to Bluffton over the summer.
Players and fans started buzzing and boasting on social media, and their expectations knew no bounds. They want rings. Nevermind the gauntlet they’ll have to navigate to get them.
Through three games, the Bobcats have lived up to the hype, but the next three games will tell us a lot more. McCarthy has carved up defenses from Whale Branch, Andrew Jackson, and Savannah Country Day to the tune of 1,034 passing yards with 10 touchdowns and one interception, and he’s added a team-best 212 rushing yards and three TDs.
He has also been equitable with his generosity, sharing the wealth incredibly evenly among Warren, Patterson, and Benjamin — all three have at least 15 catches, 234 yards, and three touchdowns through three games.
The Bobcats will meet more resistance over the next three weeks with road trips to Hampton County, Lucy Beckham, and Hilton Head High, three formidable opponents with strong defensive profiles and well-heeled coaching staffs who will prepare challenging gameplans. If McCarthy and Co. can navigate this stretch well, they’ll get a struggling Beaufort team at home and a road trip to sputtering Colleton County before massive home games against Bishop England and rival May River to end the regular season.
After that, who knows? The collection of offensive talent is as deep as we’ve seen in the area in years, and Chris Doyle and Malcolm Gordon anchor a scrappy defense, but South Florence stands in the way in the Lower State and South Pointe could be waiting again in the state finals — and that’s assuming the Bobcats outlast the rest of a strong cast of Region 6-4A rivals.
We’ll find out soon enough whether this David has enough rocks to take down its Goliath.
Justin Jarrett is the sports editor of The Island News and is the founder of Lowco Sports. He has a passion for sports and community journalism and a questionable sense of humor.
