Neo told Morpheus he didn't come to explain how the fight ends, only how it begins. That's about where we are. Nobody knows how 2026 turns out for the Yellow Jackets. Friday just tells us how it starts.
It's been a long offseason. This Friday it's back to sweating through a few hours with the rest of the Jacket faithful, and the first sweat comes in Southern Anderson County, down in Bear Territory.
Before we get into it, here's the plan for the year. Every week we'll drop a "Hanna Between the Hashes" post: a recap of the previous week and a preview of what's next, plus a rotating section of special stats and odds and ends as our database fills out. Target release is Wednesday. So let's kick this one off, and hopefully it travels like a Corban Lack kickoff.
Scrimmage Recap
Last Friday Hanna traveled to Crescent for a half-game scrimmage, varsity in the first half and JV in the second. Weather pushed kickoff back better than an hour and a half, and during that delay there were stretches where you'd have bet the whole thing got scrapped. It didn't. The rain quit and the humidity moved in.
Hanna opened with the ball and stalled. Crescent took the early lead on a 65-yard touchdown run on their second play from scrimmage. Caden Morrell answered with a kickoff return touchdown, and from there Hanna outscored the Tigers 17-10 in the second quarter to lead 24-16 at the break.
The rushing numbers need context before anyone panics. Hanna gave up 187 rushing yards, but three individual runs accounted for roughly 75 percent of that total. Strip those out and the defense was mostly holding. Through the air it was stingier, only 26 passing yards allowed. Hanna's own offense stayed modest, 60 rushing yards on 16 plays and 42 passing yards on five attempts.
Here's the thing about a scrimmage, and it's worth saying out loud because it's the season's first chance to overreact. A blowout win convinces you the team is unstoppable. A sloppy night convinces you they won't win a game all year. Both are traps. (As a Gamecock fan, I remain grateful college football has no preseason to talk me into anything, that is what message boards are for.). Let those scrimmage numbers be what they are, a counting stat coming out of a practice.
So rather than catalog what didn't work against a Crescent team that projects as one of 2A's better outfits this fall, here's the more useful exercise. Belichick used to tell his staff to report what a player can do, not what he can't, so the coach could build around the strengths. Same approach here. Three things the scrimmage told me Hanna can lean on.
Playmakers who change a possession by themselves. Morrell led this. He got exactly one offensive carry and turned it into 36 yards, a run bottled up to the right until he redirected, found another gear, and beat the pursuit to the end zone. That's the kind of snap that pays a dividend every week. Behind him, Demarcus Duck and Daevon Mattison ran with real force out of the fullback spot, hitting the interior with power but showing enough wiggle at the second level to keep going. The two combined for 26 yards on four carries, 6.5 a pop. Add last season's leading rusher Brock Cole to that group and the backfield has a genuine top-tier ceiling.
Speed on the edges and in the back end was another spot that stood out Friday. The pleasant surprise Friday was the defense outside the tackles and downfield. Against a team that likes to throw, Hanna allowed three completions on nine attempts for 26 yards. Myles Norris, Emez Nance, Jamarion Williams, and Darius Hanna stood out to me, and the group tackled well in space when the run leaked outside.
Special teams was an actual weapon. I should have noted this in the season preview. Going back through last year's available film, one thing kept jumping out, Hanna was excellent on kickoff returns, and not only on the ones that went the distance. It was the hidden yardage too, the 10-yard return that quietly becomes 18. Friday made the point in bold. Two kickoff-return touchdowns. Morrell took the game's second kickoff back nearly 90 yards, and later Hanna broke another one 90-plus to the house.
The kicking half of it matters just as much. Corban Lack had four kickoffs, three of them touchbacks, which is the cleanest way to take a return team's legs out from under it. He also went 3-for-3 on PATs and drilled a 26-yard field goal late in the half. A kicker you trust changes how comfortable a staff feels all season.
Add it up and the scrimmage did its job. Not a scoreboard to frame, but a look at what this team already does well: a backfield with people who can flip a possession, a secondary and edge that held up against a passing team, and a special-teams unit that looks like it could win Hanna a game or two on its own. Scrimmages don't count, and one rainy half at Crescent won't tell you how August turns into November. What it does tell you is that the pieces worth building around showed up. Now they carry it somewhere it counts.
The Week 1 Preview
Here we are. The games start to matter.
Hanna travels south but stays inside Anderson County to face the BHP Bears, the 27th meeting in a series where Hanna holds an 18-8 edge. Hanna opened the rivalry in 1968 and won the first seven, running from 1968 through 1984. The two sides met sporadically between then and the turn of the century. Then no meetings at all between 2000 and 2015, the longest gap in the rivalry. The most recent chapter belongs to Hanna with wins in all four meetings from 2016 through 2018 and again in 2021.
What BHP became during this last quiet stretch is the whole challenge this week. From 2022 through 2025 the Bears went 50-6 with two Upper State championships, three region titles, and offenses that cleared 5,500 total yards a season. That's one of the most dominant teams in the state over that timeframe.
But now it is a program in transition. BHP is coming off a second straight state-championship loss, and the offseason brought a coaching change: longtime head coach Russell Blackston is out, and David Crane takes over. The Bears will also break in a new quarterback, a freshman making his first real varsity starts, and many new starters on every level of each side of the ball. Talent is still on hand, but the head man steering it is new, and Week 1 will be different for everyone in Navy and Red.
But here are two Bears that will demand Hanna's attention.
Ty Dubose is the latest in a line of college-level linebackers BHP has produced, and this is his year to headline. Against Southside Christian last week he needed only a half to post five solo tackles, two tackles for loss, and a sack. He plays downhill and fast, and he can wreck a run or a pass before the design ever develops. Hanna's offense will need to account for him.
The other is Nick Sargent, in my opinion the best tight end in the state. He's tall, athletic, and a problem wherever BHP lines him up, on the line or split out against a defensive back. He caught all three balls thrown his way last week, but the numbers undersell him. His real value is gravity. BHP will put him in a spot and the defense has to tilt toward him, which opens grass somewhere else. Accounting for Sargent without leaving the rest of the field exposed is one of Friday's quieter puzzles.
On the Hanna side, the case for optimism starts up front and on special teams. BHP scrimmaged Southside Christian and came out on the wrong end of a 21-0 result. However two of those scores were set up by bad punt snaps and short fields. Hanna's ground game, and the number of players who can take a handoff, should stress a Bears defense that will be starting most of its personnel for the first time.
The special-teams edge is the one I'd circle. BHP struggled badly with punt mechanics last week, and Hanna came within inches of blocking two punts in its own scrimmage. Put those two facts side by side and you have a matchup that could swing the whole night on a single snap.
The real hurdle is the one every Week 1 shares. We don't know how a team responds until the lights come on for real. BHP will arrive motivated to prove it's still a championship program despite the changes. Hanna wants to make its own announcement about 2026. Whoever states that case more emphatically wins the night.
A few numbers in Hanna's favor before kickoff. Under Coach Tone, Hanna is 6-1 in season openers and 13-1 in the game following a loss. When the Yellow Jackets hold an opponent under two touchdowns, they're 21-0. When they score 20 or more, they're 60-10, both under Coach Tone. None of that plays a down for you, but it tells you what this program does when it gets into the positions it wants.
So this is the test. A Bears team with championship talent and something to prove, a new staff finding its footing, a young quarterback getting thrown into the deep end, and a Hanna squad that thinks it has the horses to make Friday its own statement. The margins point to special teams and the ground game, but Week 1 has a way of ignoring the script. All of it comes down to who handles the moment first, because everything else this season is built on top of it. You can't win them all if you don't win the first one.
Getting there
We're standing at the bottom of the climb again, the 2026 season stretched out above us, and Friday is the first step. The Hanna team that opens against BHP won't be the one that finishes the year. Growth shows up week to week. But it is the one that gets the whole thing started.
We hope to see every Yellow Jacket fan down at BHP, sweating it out with the rest of us. If you can't make it, follow along on X and Facebook, with live stat updates on Exceeding Stats. Check back next week for the next Hanna Between the Hashes.