Light traffic maneuvered easily along Church Street in downtown Swansea, a community of 770 residents south of Columbia. A smattering of cars populated the parking lot of the DG Market. 

Townsfolk normally assemble weekdays three blocks away at the Sunoco service station. They indulge in gizzards, fried shrimp and the store’s locally famous potato wedges from the hot bar. 

Then they often move their conversations outdoors to the parking lot. This was Friday night, though. “Nobody’s here,” said Nakita Maxwell, Sunoco’s 32-year-old store clerk.

“Usually, on Friday nights, Swansea shuts down,” said 40-year-old Jeremy Wilder, who owns the Swansea Oil Company on the outskirts of town.

Friday nights are reserved for high school football. Swansea High School football, to be precise. 

Championship DNA

On one evening, the home stands at the stadium off Redmond Mill Road near downtown are nearly full. Counting the gathering of old heads standing along the fence near the end zone, the Tigers’ game against Silver Bluff was played before a capacity crowd of more than 1,000.

“The community stands behind the team, especially when they’re winning,” said 62-year-old Steven Dibble, Swansea’s quarterback on the 1980 team that lost the state championship game to much-hated Woodruff. 

Dibble knows a little bit about Swansea High’s mostly glorious football history. He and his sidekick on the night, 62-year-old Laymond Zeigler, grew up in Swansea and still live there today. Zeigler, a linebacker on that 1980 team, works for Michelin Tire, 20 miles north in Lexington. Dibble works for Innovative Display Works in Columbia.    

The pair are not gray-haired enough to remember Swansea’s state title in 1960, but they watched as youngsters when the Tigers captured championships in 1974 and 1975, then as graduates when Swansea claimed crowns in 1992, 1993 and 1994. Swansea also managed state runner-up finishes in 1961, 1970, 1980 and 1991.

That kind of winning tradition factored into head coach Willie Fox’s decision to depart Wagener-Salley High for Swansea two years ago. Fox constructed the golden age of Wagener-Salley football in nine seasons there, winning three region championships and 69 of 100 games while advancing deep into the state playoffs three times.

“I was excited at the chance to build something again,” said Fox, who turned 40 years old in October. “To me, that’s the fun part.”

Swansea compiled a respectable 7-4 record in Fox’s first season, one in which he installed the single-wing offense. 

The offense was the brainchild of legendary coach Pop Warner in the early 1900s. It quickly garnered widespread use in college and pro football. Now, only a smattering of high schools across the country employ the novelty offense.

With a year of experience running Fox’s system, the Tigers opened this season with seven consecutive wins. The longer the win streak stretched, the more Fox’s hair began to curl around the edges. Heeding superstition, his last visit to Knuckleheads Barbershop in Wagener was in late July. 

By winning, the Tigers regained the support of the Swansea community. Fans whose interest might have waned during the losing years are coming back out for home games. The team is the talk of the town, once again.

A town in need

The Town of Swansea has not had a lot to celebrate over the past half-century, perhaps beyond. It was established as a farming community. Its center long served as a gathering spot for farmers to buy and sell their wares on weekends. 

The downtown thrived into the 1950s and early 1960s. Mack’s Restaurant, Harley Drug, Burnette Mercantile Company, Floyd Motor Company and B.E. Williams Hardware all occupied downtown buildings and catered to area farmers and their families.

“It used to be a thriving downtown,” said 89-year-old Catherine Hutto, speaking as she ate lunch at the Swansea Senior Citizen Center.   

She fondly remembers when the town roped off South Monmouth Avenue on summer Saturday nights for live music and dancing.

The town gained a modicum of infamy from the 1920s into the 1960s for recognition as the moonshine capital of South Carolina. Area corn production, which was used for bootleg whiskey, was measured not by bushels-per-acre, but by gallons-per-acre, according to the 2010 book “Man In The Gap” by former Swansea High football player Brette Simmons.

Passenger trains stopped rolling through town in the early 1960s, and the town’s major employer, L.O. Rast, closed its basket factory in 1964. The Eastman Chemical Company began operations in nearby Gaston in the late 1970s, but it had little impact on Swansea’s economy.

Swansea has long suffered from a shallow tax base, leading to financial struggles. In early October, the town accepted the resignation of Police Chief Bill Charlton after the town council revealed it could no longer afford his annual salary, estimated between $59,000 and $64,000. 

Now Swansea no longer has a police department.

Swansea is almost evenly split, 47% white, 42% Black, according to the 2020 census. Its median household income in 2020 was $32,708, just above the national poverty line.

Of the five restaurants in town, only one opens its doors on weekends. There are as many liquor stores (two) as there are stoplights. Residents apparently find solace and, perhaps, salvation, through attendance at Sunday church services.

Nearly 20 churches populate the landscape of the 2.1 square-mile town proper. The New Life House of Ministry is one of a smattering of occupied storefronts in the downtown district. Most buildings are boarded up. 

Elderly men gather daily at the old two-pump Swansea Oil Company, which they refer to as the “Swansea Information Center,” to pass along town gossip and solve the nation’s problems. 

Road conditions are the subject of conversation these days. North Church Street was recently paved, but Calvary Church Road, Tickle Weed Road and Pine Plain Road are deemed a “hazard to cars,” according to the guys.

At the Sunoco station, the daily discussion often centers around ever-increasing prices, from $11 for a bale of hay at The Store on Highway 6 outside Swansea, to $9.99 for country liver pudding at Shumpert’s Kitchen.

The real grist for the gossip mill recently was the caskets on display inside and outside Moore Junk on North Church Street. It seems that Edward Moore, the store’s owner, purchased about 50 caskets through foreclosure of a storage unit just in time for Halloween.

Changing the culture 

Nothing compares to the chatter about Swansea football when the team is winning. Doug Bennett got it all started at Swansea High, establishing one of the most successful programs in the state over a 36-year career. 

Bennett arrived on the scene for the 1954 season. Seven years later and Bennett’s club won all 13 games en route to the state championship. Then he navigated the program through the treacherous waters of integration, managing to unite his Black and white players while a community was divided.

“Is it possible that the success of the Tiger football team and the overall improvement of athletics at Swansea High School somehow produced common ground upon which two races of mankind could stand with community pride and learn to trust the other just a little bit more?” asked author Simmons with a rhetorical question in the aforementioned book “Man In The Gap” about Bennett and his Hall of Fame coaching career.

Bennett’s teams galvanized the community for nearly four decades, his career concluding in 1989 with a 256-137-4 record and three state titles. Robert Maddox followed with a 92-40 record and three state championships over 10 seasons.

After Maddox’s departure following the 1999 season, the program fell on hard times for most of the next quarter-century.

Then Fox arrived. 

He played football at Pelion High School, but the demand for a 5-foot-7, 240-pound offensive lineman at the collegiate level was nonexistent. So, Fox attended and graduated from USC Aiken, which does not offer football.

Even during his first head-coaching job at Wagener-Salley, Fox had an eye on Swansea. He lost out in a 2019 interview for the Swansea job. Then he landed the position in 2023. 

His hiring came on the heels of Swansea going 0-10 in 2023, its third winless season in the past four.

During his first meeting with the Swansea football team, Fox established “who we are going to be.” He printed T-shirts with TACT emblazoned on the back, representing Team, Accountability, Competition and Toughness.

Fox also brought along the single-wing offense, which he started using at Wagener-Salley quite by happenstance.

In his fifth season there, Fox learned that the starting quarterback had been suspended by the player’s parents the night before a game. Fox’s backup quarterback was freshman Nathan Chandler, whose passing acumen was limited. 

Fox and his coaching staff opted to use the run-happy single-wing attack for the next day’s game. Wagener-Salley did not attempt a pass, rushed for more than 400 yards and easily defeated Denmark-Olar.

His teams have run the single-wing ever since, including a season ago when Swansea passed for a mere 400 yards in 11 games and attempted fewer than 60 passes. 

There are advantages to running the unusual offense.

“It’s different,” Fox said. “Nobody wants to defend it. I think there is some value at being different, especially if you’re good at being different.”

The road ahead

Fox has placed the management of this season’s single-wing attack in the hands of talented 15-year-old sophomore quarterback Kendall Wright. Wright is a product of the town’s Kuntry Boyz youth football program and has been attending Swansea High games since he was 6.

As the fourth of five boys to Kendrick and Wendy Wright, Kendall watched his older brother, Cameron, play for the Tigers. The family resides a few long runs out of the single-wing offense from the high school.

Now, it is Kendall’s time to shine. That means proudly wearing his No. 17 jersey at school on game days. Then, going to the pregame meal served at 4 p.m. in the school cafeteria and catered each week by a different area church. 

That includes a meal of chicken tenders and green beans provided recently by the Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, where wide receivers coach Zachary Smith is a preacher. For good measure, defensive backs coach David Smith made the banana pudding dessert.

The latter Smith is among four assistant coaches who have served as head coaches at other South Carolina high schools. The others are running backs coach Jason Bush, defensive coordinator Brad Coleman and offensive line coach Preston Deaver, who also serves as Swansea’s athletic director and head baseball coach.

When Fox arrived, he began what he aims to become tradition at Swansea. Seniors lead the team as they walk behind the grandstands before kickoff at Doug Bennett Stadium. The players then jog down the stadium steps through their staunch fan following and onto the perfectly manicured field. Defensive line coach Marty Mack has lined the field for home games in 23 of his 26 years at Swansea High. 

Before the game versus Silver Bluff, the players stand at attention as the Swansea High choir sings the national anthem. The 37-member band, including seven middle-schoolers, provides the halftime entertainment under the direction of Luke Meche. “A Case of Deception” is the theme on this night, with the music written by Nick Hammond, a percussion instructor and Swansea High graduate.

This year’s version of the Swansea Tigers includes 36 players, meaning all practice with both the offensive and defensive units. Five players are starters on both sides of the ball: Senior running back/defensive back Dante Caldwell, senior tight end/linebacker William Geddis, junior wide receiver/defensive back Tarez James, junior wingback/defensive back Trace Selfridge and sophomore lineman Kevin Sightler.

Swansea games are a family affair for Fox. His wife, Erin, is somewhat of the “get-back” coach on the sideline, making sure players stand behind a designated line and assistant coaches are not flagged for being on the field illegally. 

In her other unofficial role as “Team Mom,” Erin occasionally consoles players near the bench.

“I chew them out,” Willie said. “She wraps her arms around them.”

The players needed many hugs when an interception led to Silver Bluff’s winning touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. The 37-28 final score led to a solemn fan base quietly exiting the stadium.

Immediately after the game, Fox addressed his dejected team on the field. The dreams of an unbeaten season had vanished. All was not lost, though, as the team still has playoff positioning on the line. 

Fox was more concerned about the criticism the players might face from townfolks, who long ago became accustomed to winning and still find it difficult to accept losing.

“I still love you,” Fox told the players. “I’m proud of you. The only people we need are the ones we’ve got. Stay together.”

Fox greeted a few friends, then turned and walked slowly toward the Swansea clubhouse. The next morning, Fox headed to Knuckleheads Barbershop for a haircut.