The rain showed up early Friday, made its point, and left. By kickoff the sky had cleared into the kind of night that flatters everybody, and the threat of heavier weather later had already pushed the start forward an hour. Whatever that earlier whistle did to Hanna, the Jackets should ask for it every week, because they came out like the storm that never arrived and washed Powdersville off the field before the home team could get their footing.
It started on Powdersville's second snap. Nasir Waldrop got hit, the ball came loose, and Hanna was in exactly the right spot to grab it. One play later Demarcus Duck answered with a House Call and a 19-yard sprint to the end zone, Corban Lack did his automatic thing for the extra point, and Hanna had a lead it would not surrender for the rest of the evening.
Editorial note: for the record, I believe every time Demarcus Duck crosses the goal line it should be called a Duck Call in reference to a House Call, another word for a Touchdown. And yours truly would like to see Hanna fans treat it accordingly. Bring your duck calls on Friday nights, and when Demarcus gets a carry, let him hear them. The ball’s in your court Duck Commander.
Hanna kept the pressure coming. Two more Powdersville punts sandwiched a Lack field goal from 45 yards, which is worth pausing on, because that kick is now the third-longest in school history and it pushed the lead to 10-0 barely past the midpoint of the first quarter. Then came the one crack in the wall. A Hanna drive stalled, and Powdersville's Dashton Brown found Xavier Huggins who took the short pass 86 yards for a touchdown, the kind of single strike that has become the only way anyone scores on this defense.
Hanna’s answer told you everything about how the night was going. Hanna got methodical, marching 85 yards on 12 plays and finishing with a Brock Cole five-yard touchdown run. That drive was the whole personality of the game in miniature, a long, patient possession that asked Powdersville to make twelve consecutive stops and watched them fail to make one that mattered. Hanna carried a 17-7 lead into halftime, and it felt larger than the number.
The third quarter is where a good team decides whether a lead becomes a result. Both offenses opened with three-and-outs, and then Hanna went 56 yards in five plays to make it 23-7. Powdersville's response was the strangest sequence of the night, a fake punt on fourth-and-31 that Hanna sniffed out and stuffed (after a 24 yard scamper, but the Patriots were facing 4th and 31). Three plays later Cole scored again, this time from ten yards out, and the scoreboard settled at 30-7 with plenty of night left to play out but nothing left to decide.
Offensively it was the quintessential Hanna evening, the kind that does not produce a single hero because it produces plenty of them. Twelve different Jackets carried the ball, combining for 43 rushes, 213 yards, and four rushing touchdowns. When a dozen backs are averaging what this group averaged (5 yards per carry), the result does not tell you which one to worry about. It tells you the problem is the whole group. And the passing game did exactly as much as it needed to and no more, four completions on six attempts for 30 yards.
The defense was the same story it has been all year. Powdersville had twelve drives and ten of them ended in a punt or a turnover. The Patriots finished with 239 total yards, 188 of them through the air, and 86 of that came on the one Huggins touchdown that stands as the lone blemish. On the ground the Jackets held the Patriots to 51 yards on 24 carries, a shade over two yards a play, which is not defense so much as refusal.
Zoom out and the season numbers stop being impressive and start being strange, in a good way. Hanna has surrendered 21 total points across eight quarters, however every one of them arrived in the first quarter. All three touchdowns the defense has allowed have traveled more than 50 yards, two of them more than 75, which means nobody has managed to string together an actual drive against this group. Of the 490 yards Hanna has given up all season, 219 came on three plays, nearly half the total numbers packed into three snaps. The Jackets have not allowed a touchdown in the second, third, or fourth quarter this year. They have not allowed a rushing touchdown. They have not let a single opponent reach the red zone. They have given up three third-down conversions all season. It is early, and early numbers have a way of humbling the people who quote them, but trends have to start somewhere, and these are worth watching closely.
Looking down at the field afterward, the thing that kept coming to mind was how different this felt from the week before. Against BHP, it seemed for something like 40 of the game's 48 minutes that Hanna was headed for the wrong result. This one was the opposite from the opening snap. Hanna grabbed it by the horns and never once loosened its grip, and there is a real difference between winning a game and never letting your opponent believe they were in it.
The Road Gets Longer
The season keeps rolling and the Jackets stay on the bus, this time for a considerably longer ride, headed to Lexington County to meet the White Knoll Timberwolves. The last time these two crossed paths was 2023, when Hanna had to climb out of a 12-point fourth-quarter hole to steal a one-point win in the first round of the playoffs.
Plenty has changed since. The following season White Knoll went 14-1 and reached the 5A state championship game against Dutch Fork, then backed it up with consecutive eight-win seasons. This year the Timberwolves welcome new head coach Victor Floyd, who moves from Chester with a 2018 state title on his résumé. However the season has not opened the way the Timberwolves hoped. White Knoll dropped its opener to A.C. Flora 31-21 and fell to Sumter 34-27 last week, two close losses to a pair of good Midlands teams.
They are 0-2, but that undersells how they have played. This is a team with talent across the field that has played tough football and simply come up a few possessions short twice. Offensively it will feel familiar after last week, a one-back spread that leans on inside zone and works its passing concepts out of balanced formations. What sets them apart is the screen game, and specifically that they screen from the receiver position rather than to the tailbacks. Junior quarterback Brayden Cress runs the show, and his top target is junior Kentrell Bonnette, a long, rangy athlete who is even more dangerous moving than his size suggests. Around Bonnette the Timberwolves rotate a group of fast, twitchy receivers in Jaylen Keith, Tyler Brown, and all-around athlete Jonathan Keith. That collection of weapons is what makes this the most dangerous passing attack Hanna has seen so far this season.
The defense carries the same athleticism, and while the overall numbers do not flatter it, the individual pieces demand respect. White Knoll plays a three-man front built to get as many two-way athletes on the field as possible on the back end of the defense. It starts with defensive end and outside linebacker Jah'Mauri Davis, a genuine pass rusher who does that one thing extremely well. Beside him is Noah Mar, another junior, a large, strong run-stopper, and behind them a pair of thumping linebackers in Adrian Ellsworth and Evan Pierce. On the back end, Cl'Menta Crosby and Kyle Griffin are the defensive backs capable of turning a game with one play.
What will decide Friday’s Outcome.
Start with Hanna's run game, because for all the talent on White Knoll's front, the group has bled yardage on the ground. A.C. Flora ran for 233 yards on 36 carries in Week 1, and Sumter piled up 341 on 53 attempts last week. Expect the fullbacks to find room in the middle, and expect bigger gains to come when Hanna reaches for counters and misdirection to punish a defense that flows hard to the ball.
Next, Hanna's pass defense, which is where this game will actually be won or lost. The Timberwolves have generated almost nothing on the ground the last two weeks, so the part of Hanna's defense that has been suffocating should stay that way. The variety is the new problem. BHP and Powdersville each funneled their passing game through one man, BHP's Malachi Bohler going for four catches, 162 yards, and two scores, and Powdersville's Xavier Huggins finishing with eight catches, 117 yards, and a touchdown. White Knoll can come at you from too many directions to key on one, which is new for Hanna this season. It starts up front, because Cress is a different quarterback pressured than he is with clean windows. Get to him, and get to him often, and the night gets long for the Timberwolves in Lexington County Friday.
Last, the distance itself. The first two road trips were inside Anderson County, a 35-minute drive from campus. This one is more than two hours away against an opponent Hanna knows little about firsthand. Pair that unfamiliarity with White Knoll's record and you have the exact recipe for a team to talk itself into a letdown. Hanna will have to manufacture its own energy Friday and keep it lit for all four quarters.
Two wins in the bank, a longer road ahead, and a Timberwolves team that is better than its record and plays in exactly the kind of trap a good season learns to survive. Hanna will look to stay perfect, and make that long trip home a little more enjoyable.
Statistically Speaking
This week hands Hanna a shot at two things the program has almost never done, a road win in the middle of the state and a road winning streak that has happened exactly once before.
Hanna is about to do something it has managed only one other time in school history, open a season with three straight true road games. The only prior occurrence was 2021, when the Jackets opened at Laurens, at Wren, and at BHP, won all three, started 3-0, and finished 10-2. This year's slate of at BHP, at Powdersville, and at White Knoll is just the second three-road-game opening stretch Hanna has ever had.
A win Friday would also break a drought measured in half-centuries. Hanna is 1-3 all-time in true road games against Lexington County schools, and the lone victory came 8-7 at Irmo on September 3, 1976. Beating White Knoll would deliver Hanna's first true road win over a Lexington County opponent, in Lexington County, in exactly 50 years. (Hanna did play Dutch Fork twice in the state championship but both were at a neutral location).
And this is only the third Hanna team ever to start 2-0 with both wins coming on the road. The other two were 2020 and 2021, teams that finished 7-1 and 10-2, a combined 17-3, a .850 clip. Both of those teams finished with winning records, and after road wins over BHP and Powdersville, the 2026 Jackets have joined that very short list.
Closing
Hanna has done exactly what it set out to do, taking the first two, and now the road keeps going and the drive keeps getting longer. White Knoll sits two hours towards Columbia with an 0-2 record that makes this look easier than it is. So this is not a week to look ahead and assume the best. There is history on the table too. A win would be Hanna's first true road victory in Lexington County in fifty years, the kind of drought that does not end on its own and will not end Friday unless the Jackets travel the way they have played so far this season.
Two wins in, the Jackets have started to build a resume. A defense nobody has solved for more than one play at a time, an offense that builds momentum with a full stable of ball carries, and a road start that could end with a piece of history most Hanna teams never got near. What comes next is the part that separates a good start from a special season. Friday, and the weeks stacked up behind it, will tell everyone exactly how far this team intends to go.
We hope to see every Yellow Jacket fan at White Knoll. 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.