Jacket fans, by the time Hanna kicks off Friday, it will have been 11 days since the Yellow Jackets last played football and two full (work) weeks since the night that game started. That math only works because the Mauldin game took up two different days on the calendar. It began on Friday the 18th, with Hanna looking to bounce back from its first loss of the season, and it ended on Monday the 21st, after a halftime that deserves its own chapter. We'll get there. The football came first, and nearly all of it went Hanna's way.
Mauldin struck first though, and it didn't take long. Ryland Walton broke an 80-yard run on the Mavericks' first offensive play, and for one snap it looked like the night might get complicated. The Hanna defense then spent the rest of the first half making that run look like a clerical error. After Walton's touchdown, Mauldin gained eight more total yards before halftime, and its remaining first-half possessions went punt, punt, punt, turnover, punt and the end of the half. That's the kind of drive chart a defensive coordinator frames and hangs in the office.
The offense needed a little longer to find its footing. Hanna's opening drive moved into Mauldin territory before an interception ended it, but after the first Mauldin punt, the Jackets went 26 yards and let Corban Lack finish the job from 43 yards out. That cut the deficit to 7-3 with just over four minutes left in the first quarter, and it wouldn't stay a deficit for long. Taking over with a little less than three minutes left in the opening quarter, Hanna went 47 yards in 10 plays, and Will Mayfield plunged in to the end zone to put the Jackets ahead 10-7 with nine minutes left in the half.
Then the defense decided it wanted in on the scoring. Hanna forced a three-and-out, and when Mauldin lined up to punt, Esaias Carroll jetted off the edge and blocked the kick. Greg Tatum scooped up the loose ball and carried it 10 yards into the end zone, and just like that it was 17-7 with a little under eight minutes left before the break. The defense still wasn't finished. Mauldin's next drive ended in an interception, Lack turned it into his second field goal of the half, and Hanna took a 20-7 lead into what everyone assumed would be a normal intermission.
Halftime started the way it was scripted to. Hanna introduced its 2026 Athletic Hall of Fame class of Isaac Allred, Ben Boulware, Garrett Boulware, Mary Kay Campbell, Brooks Hall and Ashley Jenkins, six people who represent T.L. Hanna athletics about as well as anyone could. The ceremony had six honorees on the program. Thor apparently took that as a personal slight and showed up anyway. With lightning close to the stadium, both teams stayed in their locker rooms and the stadium was evacuated. From my seat in the press box, I spent the next stretch watching grown men take a golf cart ride up a hill, and I can honestly say I have never watched a golf cart with that kind of intensity in my life. The hope was to finish later that night, but the weather kept getting worse and midnight kept getting closer, and eventually the call came to push the second half to Monday.
I want to stop here for a moment, because the people who made Monday possible deserve more than a passing line. Credit goes to both coaching staffs, and especially to Athletic Director Bell and everyone who works alongside him. Most of us take a Friday night football game for granted, as if it simply shows up because it's Friday. Now try moving half of one. You're juggling other sports' schedules, officials' availability, the forecast for every possible makeup date and probably a hundred other variables most of us will never think about, and suddenly a postponed game starts to look like a task nobody could pull off cleanly. Coach Bell and his team made it look routine.
So the game went on Monday at 6:30, roughly 70 hours after the teams left the field. I can't prove it, and I'm honestly not sure where anyone would look it up, but I will confidently say that it was the longest halftime in Hanna football history. If someone has a record of a longer one, I want to hear about it.
Whatever Hanna did with its long weekend, it showed up after the break. The offense came back with an extra spark, opening the second half with back-to-back touchdown drives of 70 yards in seven plays and 61 yards in seven plays, and by the 5:43 mark of the third quarter the lead was 33-7. The defense, meanwhile, picked up exactly where it had left off three days earlier. Mauldin's second-half possessions went punt, punt, turnover, turnover on downs, turnover. The Mavericks managed 49 yards after halftime, and they didn't pick up their first first down of the game until late in the fourth quarter.
Put the two halves together and the shape of the night comes into focus. Mauldin gained 80 yards on its first play and 57 yards on every other snap combined. Hold onto that number, because it comes back up when we get to Fountain Inn.
I know I go on and on about this defense, and I hope you'll trust me when I say it isn't hyperbole. I've seen a lot of great high school defenses over the years, and this one belongs right there with them.
Hanna handed the ball to 13 different rushers before it was over, and the 33-7 final closed out non-region play with the Jackets at 4-1. Coach Tone has talked all season about how young this team is, and by birth certificate he's right, but a young team stops being quite so young once it starts stacking up experience. That's what the non-region schedule gave this group - a handful of nights where it had to find a way after an opponent clawed back, along with a clear sense that it hasn't come close to its ceiling. Starting Friday, the games count toward a championship, and that experience is going to be pressured in ways it hasn't been all season.
Week 6 Preview: Fountain Inn
Hanna and Fountain Inn have never played each other. That changes Friday at Hanna, and it happens in the region opener.
Fountain Inn comes in at 3-2. The Fury opened with a 24-20 win over Greenville, dropped games to Woodruff (32-15) and Hillcrest (38-20), and have since won two straight over Mauldin (24-10) and Woodmont (35-28). The Mauldin result gives the two teams a shared opponent, and I'd be careful reading much into it. Hanna won by 26 and Fountain Inn won by 14, but neither margin says a lot about what happens when these two finally line up across from each other.
What matters more is this. Every win Fountain Inn has ever recorded came with Sam Holliday at quarterback. The school opened in 2022 and went 0-10 that first season. Since then the Fury have gone 3-7, 6-5 and 6-5, and they're 3-2 this fall, which adds up to 18 wins in program history. Holliday, now a senior, and a four-year starter, started all 18 as the trigger man. Also this week Holliday committed to play football at Anderson University.
The numbers from his sophomore and junior seasons explain why. Over 2024 and 2025, Holliday accounted for 66.1 percent of Fountain Inn's offensive yards and 62.1 percent of its offensive touchdowns. He ran for 1,861 yards and 31 touchdowns and threw for 3,499 yards and 33 more, so that's 64 touchdowns produced by one player across two seasons. Like a lot of the best quarterbacks in the modern game, he does it with his arm and his legs, and the rushing numbers are the part to study. These aren't broken plays where a quarterback escapes the pocket and improvises. The Fury design their run game with Holliday as the primary ball carrier, and he took more than 38 percent of the team's rushing attempts over those two seasons. I'll mention a few other names below, but what he does for this offense, and what this offense asks of him, can't be overstated.
The main complement is BoJack Jackson (yes, the best-named player Hanna will face all season), who is also a four-year starter. Jackson has put together back-to-back seasons of more than 700 rushing yards as the power back in this offense, and his job is to grind a defense down so Holliday can pop the big one. They're at their best together in the zone read. On those plays the quarterback leaves one defender unblocked, usually the end, and decides after the snap whether to hand the ball off or keep it. If the end crashes down on the back, the quarterback pulls it and runs where the end used to be. If the end stays home, the back gets the ball heading downhill. Fountain Inn runs it extremely well, and with Holliday and Jackson both capable of hurting you, it puts a defense in tough spots and churns out chunk plays. This will be the most physical offense Hanna has faced so far and when you put physicality and big play ability together, it starts to make you worry.
A few names show up on both sides of the ball, too. Jackson and EJ Lundy both start on defense, but the two players Hanna's offense has to locate on every snap are linebacker Kam Johnson and defensive end Gavin Pyles. Both have been named the top defensive player in Upper State 4A by the South Carolina Football Coaches Association at points this season. Johnson is a thumper coming downhill from his linebacker spot, as disruptive behind the line of scrimmage as anyone on that defense, with the instincts to read run plays early he is hard to displace. Pyles may be the most physically gifted player the Fury have on that side. Fountain Inn moves between multiple fronts, and he gets pressure on the quarterback no matter where he lines up. He plays with plenty of physicality, but it's his acceleration around the edge that stands out, and it's something Hanna hasn't seen yet this season.
That defense tends to get lost behind Holliday, but its physicality has kept Fountain Inn in every game it's played, and it's going to be a real force Friday night.
The Friday Formula
Every week brings new questions, and this week is no different. Here's how I see Hanna solving them.
Rust or Recovery
Hanna comes into Friday off its bye, and a bye week can cut two ways. The time off can let the bumps and bruises of September heal and set a team up for a big second half of the season, or it can leave a team a step slow, because practice reps are not Friday night reps no matter how good the practice was. I have no doubts about this team's mindset or the staff's ability to keep it focused, but that doesn't change what Hanna needs from the opening kickoff. The Jackets need to come out fast and show that the off week came at exactly the right time. For what it's worth, history is firmly on Hanna's side here, and I'll give you that number near the bottom.
Limit Big Plays
Last week’s post looked at what explosive plays have meant for Hanna and its opponents, and one number from that post keeps sticking with me. Take away plays of 20 yards or more, and Hanna is allowing 1.77 yards per play. Of the 37 drives against this defense that didn't include an explosive play, exactly one ended in a touchdown. Mauldin was the whole idea in miniature, with 80 yards on one play and 57 on everything else combined. This defense works like a python, getting stronger the more an opponent struggles, and nobody has yet managed to string together positive play after positive play against it. That puts the pressure squarely on Fountain Inn. The Fury lean on chunk plays and decisions by their QB, and Hanna's entire defensive identity is built on slowing you down. We don't want the defense on the field any longer than it has to be, but if Fountain Inn has to drive the length of the field, it will be attempting something no one has done this year.
Give No Hope
Last week we also looked at how good Hanna has been in second halves this season, and that strength comes with a footnote. More than once, the Jackets have jumped out to a lead only to watch an opponent claw its way back in. Fountain Inn is exactly the kind of team that makes you pay for letting it hang around. The Fury have outscored their opponents in the fourth quarter of every game they've played except Hillcrest, and they tied that one 7-7. This is a hungry team with no quit in it, so Hanna needs to get the lead early, impose its will from start to finish and then play even harder after halftime, the way it has all year.
Friday comes down to a collision between two things that have both held up all season. On one side is a senior quarterback who has been at the controls for every win his school has ever recorded, running an offense built to rip off chunk plays. On the other is a defense that has turned nearly every long field this season into a punt or a turnover. Holliday is going to make some plays, because good quarterbacks do. What decides this game is whether Hanna can make him earn every yard of a long field, something almost no one has managed to do against this defense.
Statistically Speaking
Hanna wrapped up non-region play with the Mauldin win, and now the games count toward a championship, so this is a good week to look at how the Jackets have handled region play over the years. The short version is very good, and the numbers hold up no matter how far you zoom in.
All-time, Hanna is 253-150-2 in region games, and under Coach Tone the Jackets are 33-4. Narrow it to home region games and Hanna is 128-71-1 all-time and 16-2 under Tone. Narrow it again to region openers and the record is 43-21, with Tone at 6-1. Take one more step, to region openers played at home like Friday's, and Hanna is 17-10 all-time and 2-0 under Tone. At every level of that zoom, the Tone-era record sits well above a program baseline that was already strong.
The current run fits right into that. Hanna has won 13 straight region games, which ties for the third-longest region winning streak in program history. A win Friday makes it 14 and moves the streak into sole possession of third place. Only two runs have gone longer, 20 games from 1973 to 1976 and 16 games from 1989 to 1991. Since 2022, Hanna is 21-1 in region play, and the lone loss came in 2024, a 25-21 decision against Greenwood.
If recent history has shown anything, it's that Hanna reaches another level when region play arrives. This year's version of that task might look a little different, with a young roster and an opponent the Jackets have never seen, but the track record gives this team a pretty clear standard to chase.
Extra Stat Nuggets
The last three Hanna teams to start 4-1, in 2022, 2023 and 2025, all finished 10-2.
Since 2000, Hanna is 11-1 in regular-season games following a bye or open week, winning by an average of 20.1 points. The lone loss came in 2024, when Westside won 56-20. So much for rust.
Wrap-Up
People will remember the Mauldin game for the weekend in the middle of it, and that's fair, since it isn't every year a Hall of Fame ceremony gets upstaged by a thunderstorm. But the football on either side of that halftime is what should carry into Friday. Hanna fell behind on Mauldin's first play, then allowed 57 yards the rest of the way, scored in just about every way a team can score, and came back after three days off with more spark than it left with. Fountain Inn brings the most physical offense Hanna has seen and two defenders who have each been named the best in Upper State 4A, and the Jackets get to meet all of it at home with a 13-game region streak on the line.
Looking further down the road, the real value of these first five games is what they left behind. A young team collected reps it couldn't have gotten any other way, took a loss and answered it, dealt with opponents clawing back and still found ways to win, and walked into region play with a defense I'd put up against any I've seen. That's a foundation, and the numbers above suggest Hanna teams tend to know what to do with one. The region schedule will ask harder questions than August and September did, and some weeks the answers won't come easily. But if the defense keeps making every drive a long one and the offense keeps growing up as the season goes, this team has every chance to finish the way we all hope they do, and the first chance to prove it comes Friday night.
We hope to see every Yellow Jacket fan in those home statnds this Friday! If you can't make it, follow along on X and Facebook with game updates, and live play-by-play coverage on Exceeding Stats. Check back next week for the next Hanna Between the Hashes.