PAWLEYS ISLAND -- Waccamaw head coach Amondre Johnson was dripping wet from an ice water bath following the Warriors' historic victory on a chilly November night, but he didn't seem to care.
Waccamaw downed Swansea 43-23 in the first round of the 3A playoffs on Nov. 15 to notch the school's first-ever home playoff win and its first postseason victory since 2014.
It was just the school's second-ever home playoff game, the first coming back in 1997.
"Going into the season, our goal, we said it, 'What's our goal? A home playoff game,'" Johnson said. "Because we wanted the opportunity to play in front of our fans, in front of our community, and our school. We know if we had a home playoff game, we'd done something special in the region, we've done some good things. So it is very important to able to play at home, and so we are so glad we had the opportunity to do that. Glad to be able to win it. It's a big deal here."
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Johnson said a big reason for the team's success has been the leadership shown by the players.
"The first thing we addressed coming out of last season was leadership," Johnson said. "We didn't think that the leadership was where it needed to be amongst the team. On good teams, coaches lead. On great teams, players lead. So I brought the guys together and I told them, 'Here's what we need to do to get better.' ... That leadership group that we've got has really rallied the team around [them]. I can really count on those guys to keep everybody else accountable ... A big part of our practices is how physical and competitive we are, and it all starts with that core leadership group, and it's infectious and it spreads."
Some key leaders are the Grate twins, who happened to be celebrating their 17th birthday.
Quarterback Andre Grate and running back AJ Grate accounted for the Warriors' last three touchdowns of the game, starting with Andre hitting AJ for a 38-yard touchdown on 4th-and-18 to put Waccamaw up 29-16 with 1:30 to go before the half.
AJ Grate extended the Waccamaw lead when he broke away for a 55-yard touchdown to make it 36-16 with 1:35 to go in the third, and Andre Grate virtually put the game to bed with a 1-yard touchdown run to put the Warriors up 43-16 with 7:25 left in the fourth.
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"This team's special," AJ Grate said. "We've known that since the spring. This team is capable of doing things that Waccamaw's never done before, and I think we showed that here. It's just a very, very inspiring thing for us as a team, and it just gives us that drive and that want, and we're hungry for more."
Running back Zaireon Skinner also had a huge outing for the Warriors, scoring a 7-yard rushing touchdown late in the first quarter and an 82-yard kickoff return touchdown with just under nine minutes to go in the second quarter.
"I was very excited," Skinner said of the kickoff return touchdown. "We weren't doing much on special teams, so we had to make an explosive play there."
Next up for Waccamaw is a road game at Oceanside in the second round of the 3A playoffs on Nov. 22. The Landsharks advanced with a 56-14 blowout of Fox Creek on Nov. 15.
"We saw them in 7-on-7," Johnson said of Oceanside. "I mean, they're good. They're well-coached. They've got some good athletes as always. Their schedule is always super tough, and so I know that they have played some really good competition this season. They did really well in their region, which ain't an easy region with teams like Hanahan and O-W [Orangeburg-Wilkinson] in there. So we've got to go down there next Friday and play the game we know how and play hard, play tough, execute and do all the right things and come out with a victory if we can."
Waccamaw is the lone team from Georgetown County still in the postseason, with the other three schools all losing in the first round of the playoffs on Nov. 15. Georgetown was shutout 48-0 at Newberry in 3A, Andrews fell at East Clarendon 14-12 in 2A, and Carvers Bay lost 22-16 at Denmark-Olar in 1A.
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