LUMBERTON — Scotland’s scrimmage against Dillon High School has been one of the highlights of the Battle of the Carolinas Football Classic jamboree for the last two years.
The teams will clash again on Aug. 12 as a part of the full-contact jamboree’s fifth installment. The event, which is hosted by Lumberton High School, features five games between teams from North Carolina and South Carolina.
Scotland’s game, the fourth contest of the day, is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Dillon defeated an inexperienced Scotland team 18-7 last year, and the Fighting Scots are hoping to be more competitive this time around.
“Dillon put it to us last year a little bit,” Bailey said during the pre-jamboree press conference on Thursday.
Last year’s jamboree was one of Scotland’s first tests after losing a 32-player senior class that helped the team earn a state championship game appearance in 2017. The Scots only had nine seniors last season, but they managed to turn a 5-5 regular-season record into another run to the state title game.
“The good news is we have a whole bunch ( of last year’s players) coming back,” Bailey said. “I think we have nine starters back on offense. I think we have eight coming back on defense … I feel pretty good about what we have coming back.”
Like Scotland, Dillon is coming off a loss in last year’s state championship game. The Wildcats were undefeated before falling to Chester 34-28 in the South Carolina AAA championship game.
The Wildcats have six returners on offense and four on defense. Dillon offensive coordinator Kelvin Roller said the Wildcats knew they were good enough to compete in the playoffs before they took the field last season, and everything seemed to go well for them until their trip to state.
“Sometimes that can be a bad thing, when you don’t get hit in the mouth during the year and lose that last game,” Roller said. “There’s a good chance we’ll probably get hit in the mouth in this jamboree this year. That won’t be a bad thing. That’ll be a good thing.”
Coaches from many of the jamboree’s 10 teams provided insights about their respective programs during the press conference. The coaches were brutally honest in their assessments —“We’ve got a very good chance of being very bad this year,” Lakeview coach Daryl King said — but each one commended the jamboree as a well-organized opportunity to evaluate their athletes in a game-like scenario.
Each game at the jamboree will feature two 20-minute halves with a running clock. Teams will be given two timeouts to use. Plays will be dead during extra point attempts, but two-point conversion attempts will be live.
Each of the 10 schools will receive 100 tickets at a discounted rate of $5. Tickets will also be sold for $7 at the gate. All proceeds from the discounted tickets will go to the participating schools, and gate receipts will be split up to $500.
Fairmont will face Lakeview at 5 p.m. in the first scrimmage of the night. Purnell Swett will face East Bladen at 6, Red Springs will play Latta at 7, Scotland will go against Dillon at 8 and Lumberton will play Marion at 9.
