Meet the biggest 'Mouth' in basketball

    Let's have a pickup basketball game.
    I'll take players who went to high school in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. You can have the whole rest of the country.
    I've got Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith, Ty Lawson, and Brandon Jennings. That's 101 points per game in the NBA this year, plus two of the league's four leaders in assists.
    They all come from that overflowing fountain of hoops at the mouth of Wilson Creek—Oak Hill Academy. 
    Mouth of Wilson is only an hour's drive from Boone, so several of us made the trip Monday night to experience Oak Hill basketball in person. Courtside seats cost just $5, where you can get splashed by the sweat of future millionaires who are still playing for the joy of the game.
    So here we are deep in Appalachia, 12 miles from the nearest traffic light, sitting in a 300-seat gym, listening to a student play the national anthem on a clarinet, and watching the No. 1 high school basketball team in the country. Eight national championship banners adorn the far wall. Behind the basket on the left hang the college jerseys of dozens of Oak Hill graduates, including several who won national championships at Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, and Maryland.

The jerseys behind the basket represent a Who's Who of college basketball.
The Warriors have lost only once in this gym in the last 18 years.

     In a nice effort to keep things in perspective, the media guide ... What? Your local high school basketball team doesn't have its own media guide? 
     As I was saying, in a nice effort to keep things in perspective, the media guide includes this message from Oak Hill president Dr. Michael Groves: "Basketball is one of the things we do well at Oak Hill, but it is not what we do best." 
     Unlike many of the small private schools and random upstarts that have come to dominate national high school basketball in recent years, Oak Hill's roots are deep and humble. In fact, the academy is actually 13 years older than the game itself. 
     Oak Hill was founded in 1878 by Baptist churches in the New River Valley who were concerned about the lack of educational opportunities following the Civil War. It has become a boarding school serving 150 students and "offering a highly structured curriculum that focuses on accountability and self-discipline." 
     We can all admire the values Oak Hill embraces in its educational philosophy:

1. Deep down inside, all children are good.
2. Regardless of academic ability, every child is capable of success.
3. All children would rather succeed than fail.
4. Once a child gets a taste of success, he or she will want more.

     Those noble standards apply to the basketball team, too—except that we're not talking about children anymore. These are full-grown blue-chip student-athletes who have already been through the meat market of college recruiting. They've come from seven states and two other countries, leaving behind their families, friends, and hometowns to spend their final one to three years of high school here on "The Hill," polishing their college credentials. 

     The team flies to games all over the country. Last weekend, they played in a Nike tournament in San Diego. This coming weekend, they're off to Nebraska. In between, they have three home games scheduled, including the one we're watching against Hamilton Heights Christian Academy, a Chattanooga school that's no older than its seniors. Hamilton Heights has only 75 students but has attracted basketball players from Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean.

     The game is close for most of the first half, but Oak Hill's talent is overwhelming. Dwayne Bacon, a sculpted 6-foot-6 Florida State recruit, is Oak Hill's highest-scoring player since the aforementioned Brandon Jennings, who was a first-round NBA draft pick one year after he graduated from Oak Hill. Daniel Giddens, a 6-10 Ohio State signee from Georgia, rebounds relentlessly and dunks acrobatically. Andrew Fleming, a 6-5 Iowa recruit from Tennessee, drains three-pointers. Jennings' half-brother, 5-11 whirlwind Terrence Phillips, is headed to Missouri. 
     Two juniors, 6-7 Joe Hampton and 6-5 Joshua Reaves, are already committed to Penn State. Looking at Hampton's 280-pound physique, you may think it's a shame Oak Hill doesn't play football.
     Oak Hill's rotation also includes players standing 7-0, 6-9, and 6-7.
     Hamilton Heights has several college-caliber players, too, but they don't have a chance. Nobody does in Turner Gymnasium, where the Warriors have lost just once in the last 18 years. Oak Hill dominates the second half, wins 83-55, and raises its record to 38-0.
     The Warriors can't lose for winning. If you saw them lose on ESPN last month in Memphis, you need to know that their opponent used an ineligible player, so Oak Hill won by forfeit and regained its undefeated record.

     Presiding over this juggernaut is Coach Steve Smith, an Asbury College graduate whose 30-year record is 973-63, surpassing his golf buddy Dean Smith on the list of most victories by coaches named Smith. After Dean died this past weekend, USA Today called Steve for his memories. It's worth reading. 
     The fact that he's accomplished all this at Oak Hill instead of some city school says a lot about how the high school basketball landscape has changed in the 30 years since USA Today launched its Super 25 national rankings and shoe companies got their foot in the door. If you grew up with the notion that you could watch the rise of a basketball star at your local high school, you're dating yourself. Nowadays, it's rare for elite players to finish their careers at the schools where they grew up. Instead, they matriculate to places like Oak Hill.
     Mouth of Wilson is not a town—just a post office a couple of miles from campus. There's not even a crossroads—just a couple of abandoned country stores at the T intersection where Highway 16 from Jefferson, North Carolina, intersects Highway 58 between Galax and Damascus, Virginia. The "mouth of Wilson" denotes the little delta where Wilson Creek feeds into the New River. 
     If you're hungry for a McDonald's, there are none within 20 miles of Oak Hill, except for the 28 McDonald's All-Americans during Coach Smith's tenure. (Want fries with that? Down the river from Mouth of Wilson, there is a little town named Fries, but they don't have a McDonald's either.) 
     If you're thirsty for a draft, you may not be able to buy one in Grayson County, but at halftime you can step out of the stands and shoot at the same hoops as 28 NBA draftees have done.
     If you're serious about basketball, Oak Hill should be on your bucket list. 

EPILOGUE

From the Mouth of Wilson to the Big Apple

     Oak Hill pushed its record to 47-0 before losing to Montverde, Florida, 70-61, in the national championship game April 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
     Montverde is a 112-year-old private school west of Orlando that has now won three consecutive national championships. Last year's star player, D'Angelo Russell, made first-team All-America as a freshman at Ohio State. This year's star, Ben Simmons, is headed to LSU. He scored 20 points against Oak Hill and forced Giddens, to foul out.
     It wasn't a total lost weekend for Oak Hill. One of its graduates won a national championship: Quin Cook with Duke. That's one more champion's jersey for the gym wall back in Mouth of Wilson.

Dean Smith and the Carolina Way

     Dean Smith was the reason I wanted to go to the University of North Carolina. Then Chapel Hill wait-listed me, Missouri accepted me, and I practiced journalism on coach Norm Stewart instead.
     Stormin' Norman probably got tired of my Carolina  perspective, but all I knew about basketball I learned from watching Dean Smith on the ACC game of the week. I admired the ways he innovated and integrated, how he used the four corners and the blue team, and how everything fit so neatly, from those V-neck jerseys to the almost-perfect graduation rate. I was naive, and it was the Carolina way!
    As far as I was concerned, Dean Smith invented basketball. In reality, he was only two generations removed from the creation—he learned the game from Phog Allen, who learned it from Dr. James Naismith.
     I am thankful that I had the opportunity to cover ACC basketball during Coach Smith's last five seasons, including the infamous feud with Clemson's Rick Barnes that climaxed with their courtside confrontation at the 1995 ACC tournament. 
     If you're looking at Coach Smith from the viewpoint of Clemson or ABC (Anybody But Carolina), I recommend this 2013 interview with Seth Davis, where Barnes goes into detail about their relationship and says that he wishes he had handled things differently.
     Two episodes from that interview reveal a lot:
     Reporters knew Coach Smith as the master of the backhanded compliment. When ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan summoned both coaches to his home in 1995 to work out a truce, Smith told Barnes, "You're the best coach I've ever coached against that can teach guys to foul without getting caught."
     "Really?" Rick said. "You think I'm that good? Tell you what, I'll write a book on what we do if you write the foreword."
     Two years later, in October 1997, the Barnes were at home in Clemson when the news broke that Smith was retiring. His 9-year-old daughter Carley asked, "Daddy, why did he quit?"
     "I told her I don't really know. I told her how great he was, and what he meant to me growing up in North Carolina. My wife told her, 'Why don't you write him a letter?' 
     "She wrote him a letter. And he wrote back a great letter and said wonderful things about me. He said great things."
     Barnes went on to say how much he respected Smith as a coach and as a competitor who did things the right way.
     You didn't have to be Rick Barnes' little girl to get a letter from Coach Smith. I found this out last March when I saw classic stories about Coach Smith by John Feinstein and Tommy Tomlinson and emailed them to a co-worker who graduated from North Carolina and is about the same age as Barnes' daughter. "You probably don't remember Coach Smith," I said.
     Oh, was I wrong! The next day, Hope surprised me by bringing in a package of Dean Smith treasures. As a little girl, she had written him letters, and Coach had responded to each one. In his last years of coaching, he didn't need to be cultivating little fans, but he did it anyway.
     It was the Dean Smith way. He would have called it the Carolina way. 
     If there was any mercy in his memory-clouding illness, at least Coach Smith was spared from seeing the Tar Heels tailspin from the Carolina way to the Carolina wayward. 
     None of that matters anymore. The Bible says heaven is a city built foursquare. Make yourself at home, Coach.

Extra! Extra! Read all about Stoneman's Raid

     I've written thousands of stories over the past 40 years, but none has fascinated me quite like Stoneman's Raid—the events in my backyard that hastened the end of the Civil War. I've launched a new blog, The Stoneman Gazette, to share the daily details of what happened 150 years ago.
      Newspapers and armies don't take a day off, and it will be a challenge to see if I can keep up, but I intend to post a fresh story or two every day through May 3. You're welcome to read along.

Turning 60 and claiming my consecration discount

Celebrating January birthdays in the Samaritan's Purse communications department: Ron Pettit, Randy Bishop, blinking me, and Nora Gaylord.

     As of Sunday, January 18, Kevin Costner and I became consecration bargains. It's our 60th birthday. 

     The Bible says in Leviticus 27 that a man's consecration vow costs 50 shekels from age 20 to 60, but only 15 shekels after he turns 60. More on that in a moment. 
     When I reach milestones in my life, I like to look for corresponding landmarks in the Bible. 
     When Jesus was about thirty, he began his public ministry by turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana. On my 30th birthday, my family treated me like an old man and made me ride a wheelchair into a McDonald's birthday party in Greenville.
     Forty years was the time Israel wandered in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. Later, "the country was quiet for forty years in the days of Gideon"—a refreshing thought on godly leadership from Judges 8:28. I spent my 40th birthday reporting from Clemson's Littlejohn Coliseum, where Bob Sura of Florida State hit a last-second three-pointer to beat Rick Barnes' "Slab Five," the upstarts who had won at Duke the week before and driven 47-year-old Coach K into a sabbatical. 
       I turned 50 in Sri Lanka, on assignment with Samaritan's Purse following the terrible Indian Ocean tsunami. During that trip I found this nugget in Numbers 8:25: "and at the age of fifty years they must cease performing this work, and they shall work no more." That verse refers specifically to Levites, not journalists, but it does challenge anyone who says retirement is not in the Bible.
     Now I'm 60 and thinking more about consecration than celebration. I'm not even sure what a consecration vow involves, and I'm sure I've never paid for it. I'm not wrapped up in the old-covenant laws of Leviticus, which forbid barbecue and bacon, among other things. I believe that's covered in the new covenant of Jesus, who has fulfilled the law and pre-paid for my consecration, among other things.
     Consecrated means set apart, or made pure. It doesn't come cheap—under either covenant. Assuming the shekel of the sanctuary equaled a typical month's wages, my consecration vow at 59 would cost over four years of earnings. Since turning 60, I get a 35-month senior citizen discount.
     One other Bible passage mentions sixty years. 1 Timothy 5:9 says, "Do not let a widow under sixty years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man."
     It's good to know Mary will need me around for at least a little while longer. 

The Buckeye bracket-buster: Injustice for a good cause

     The college football playoff turned out almost exactly as I predicted and even better than I hoped.
     No, I didn't foresee The Ohio State University's championship, with all its rich story lines and its 245-pound definite article.
     I didn't care who won, and I watched anyway. That's progress. What intrigued me more than the teams was the way the entire playoff process played out—a process designed to fail and yet destined to give us something bigger and better.
     Raise your hand if you ever thought we could actually fit five conference champions into a four-team bracket. Here, have a buckeye—it will kill you if you try to swallow it. Seriously. 
     Smaller colleges with half the manpower have been thriving in 16-team playoffs for decades, but this is the first year the big boys have dared to play more than one post-season game. 
     And here's what just happened: 
     1. Rankings became irrelevant. All the experts on the selection committee—including Peyton Manning's dad, Andrew Luck's dad, and George Bush's secretary of state—turned out to be no wiser than sportswriters or computers when it comes to judging the relative merits of college football teams. Yes, they saw through undefeated Florida State. We all did. But in their expertise, they judged Alabama to be the best team. Their lowest-ranked team won it all. And we trust them to tell us that the next-best team did not deserve a shot? 
     2. Bowls will never be the same. 

Bowls used to stand in the way of playoffs. Today, I'd wager that the rest of the bowls in the "New Year's Six" rotation (Cotton, Orange, Fiesta, and Peach) would sell their souls for the opportunity to be quarterfinal playoffs next year. The reason? The three playoff games on ESPN were the highest-rated programs in the history of cable television. The bowls that mattered drew audiences three or four times larger than the bowls that didn't. That's money left on the table. The playoffs barely had room for the Buckeyes, but bowls always have room for an extra buck. And TV is just part of the equation. Don't get me started about the empty upper deck at the Orange Bowl. The people have spoken: We'd rather watch games that count; games that are part of a greater drama.
     3. Separation of church and playoff. The committee ought to be thankful for the waffling Big 12 and private schools Texas Christian and Baylor, who lack political clout and have been raised to accept rejection by turning the other cheek. But what if Texas had been the alternative instead of Texas Christian? What if you took Christian out of TCU's name, dressed the Froghorned talent in Longhorn uniforms, called them Texas, and stacked them up against Ohio State. Now, that last selection becomes a lot more squirmish. Who do you want to snub: Texas with one loss to Baylor, or Ohio State with one loss to Virginia Tech? Either way, you face the wrath of a half million powerful alumni. Why not make everybody happy with a play-in game?
    4. Expanded playoffs will be here sooner rather than later. It won't take 12 years, like it did with the Bowl Championship Series. That's the hidden genius of the four-team playoff. It came with injustice built in, a flaw that demands to be corrected by expansion. College presidents who would never vote for an eight-team playoff now realize they will have to accept it. Whatever the future playoffs look like, they absolutely have to include the champions of the so-called "power five" conferences. The easy solution would be an eight-team playoff, including three at-large teams. Sixteen is not impractical, especially if you play the first round on campus. The silent majority in NCAA Division I already have a 24-team football tournament, for goodness' sake. Shorten the regular season to 10 or 11 games, add a cash-cow exhibition game in the spring, and make it happen. 
    We are making progress. Here it is just three weeks before national signing day, and we're still talking about actual games rather than descending into what my friend Kerry Capps calls "recruiting porn." Another weekend of real live college football in January wouldn't hurt anybody.

Remembering my one and only Coach

Coach Brown with Melinda Hall and Angela Crosby. All three are in the Hanna Hall of Fame.

 Before there was a trophy named for him, before his plaque was hung in the T.L. Hanna High School Hall of Fame, before he won four state championships in two sports, Ed Brown cut his coaching teeth on a scraggly bunch of teenagers wearing the peach-orange polyester jerseys of Concord Baptist Church.

Ed and Sheila Brown on their 25th anniversary in 1984.

 Including me, No. 33.
 Coach Brown was the only real coach I ever had, and as far as I know we may have been the first basketball team he ever coached. 
 He was also my 11th-grade teacher in Western civilization, and his wife Sheila was my Sunday School teacher.
 History confirms that Coach Brown knew plenty about basketball, but we didn't offer him much to work with. Concord didn't even have a gym to practice in. We played our games at Gluck Mill, Orr-Lyons Mill, and the First Baptist Church. 
 We had only one decent player, and his eight-year-old sister could dribble circles around the rest of us. I don't know that we ever successfully executed the pick-and-rolls Coach tried to teach us, but it was not for a lack of patient coaching on his part. 
 We didn't win very often, and I didn't score very much, but over two years we improved. We learned how to represent our church. Coach Brown set the example. 
 Kids often don't fully appreciate our coaches and teachers until years later. I dealt with Coach Brown throughout my 26 years as a sportswriter but didn't pause to reflect on the scope of his accomplishments until I got the call on Christmas Eve that Coach had died. 
 I remembered that he coached the girls' basketball program at Hanna and won a state championship in 1981 with Melinda Hall, the kid sister I mentioned previously. Google reminded me that he had also won three state championships in boys' golf and was instrumental in organizing girls' golf on a statewide level—to the extent that the state champion receives the Ed Brown trophy.
 I knew he was a deacon, but I had forgotten he was also a football referee, and until now I never realized he was Korean War veteran. His Facebook page is a hall of family.
 Coach Brown was a fixture at T.L. Hanna for 30 years, and he was a pillar of our church for even longer. Half of Anderson knew him, and I don't think he forgot any of us. 
 Thanks, Coach, for having the faith to put me into the game, and and for setting a lifelong example of how to live triumphantly.

Goodnight, Skitty

     Our sweet old cat died in her sleep Tuesday morning, just two weeks short of her 19th birthday. In people years, that would be close to 100. If you can trust Google, she was just four years behind the world’s oldest living cat.
     What were the secrets of her long life?

     1. Eighteen years of naps. 
     2. On-demand breakfasts at 4 a.m. 
     3. A name that made her tough as you-know-what.
     My generation will remember “A Boy Named Sue,” written by Shel Silverstein and sung by Johnny Cash, about a runaway dad who gave his boy a girly name so he would have to “get tough or die.” Another song by another John helped cast our cat's fate.

My name is Scat.
 You got a problem with that?

     Marta was just 13 when she got this kitten for Christmas and named her Skitty Skat with a nod toward jazzy "scat singing" made popular at the time by Scatman John. Then Katy went on her fourth-grade field trip and discovered an earthier meaning for scat. They had sisterly disagreements over how to interpret or spell the name—and they are both spelling zealots. 

     Not until we were arranging for Skitty's burial did I realize that the vet's records—evidently filled out by Katy—listed her official name as “Scat.”
     Wonder what the vets privately thought of us?
     I don't think Skitty held it against us, though with cats you never really know. 

     Back when we were still living in Greenville, Skitty was the inspiration for Hall’s “Scat-Net,” a clever litterbox-cleaning device he contrived for the Invention Convention at League Academy. 
     By the time we moved to Boone, Skitty exuded seniority. She knew how to get her way. Long ago, probably during one of her insistent 4 a.m. feedings, I vowed to outlive her—which I think she took as a challenge. We grew old together. 
     For half of my adult life, she's been alongside. Now, our tortoise-haired matron has finally finished her race.
     She helped us raise three great kids (not to mention a couple of fine dogs), tolerated our scatological humor, and occasionally blessed us with a contented purr. What more could you ask from a cat than that? Goodnight, Skitty. 

Sisyphus vs. South Carolina

I caught up with Charlie Zerphey at the highest point in Union County. Beddington Mountain is only 795 feet above sea level but has a four-state view. Thin hair, if not thin air. 

    On Wednesday afternoon, October 22, I parked my faithful old Accord beside a lonely stretch of asphalt in eastern North Carolina and started walking westward along a sandy logging road that crisscrossed the South Carolina line three times. After a brisk mile, I turned left and followed my GPS as I threaded through rows of timber, looking for a hidden hilltop on a bluff above the Little Pee Dee River.

     I kept going up until I couldn't go any higher. And then I was done.

     Standing 180 feet above mean sea level and 75 miles from the beach, I scuffed my sneakers on the highest sandhill in Dillon County. As the pines rustled in polite applause, I completed a mostly solitary multi-year mission to find and visit the highest points in all 46 counties of South Carolina.

     And on the long drive home, I pondered: How do I explain my quest to anyone who asks, "Where did you go on your vacation?"

     Let's see. Last week I visited Liberty Hill, Society Hill, Little Mountain twice, a couple of fire towers, three antebellum plantations, four peanut fields, five gas stations, about a dozen deerstands, and the highest natural land in 23 mostly flat counties, including a few that actually have rewarding views.

     Why, you ask? 

     Because, I confess, I am a "county high-pointer."

     By definition, that means I try to visit the highest point in the 3,143 counties, parishes, independent cities, and other jurisdictions across our great land. But that only raises more questions. Let me try to explain. 

     I enjoy mountain-climbing, and I don't let the absence of mountains stop me. Someday I’d like to climb the highest peaks in lots of states, but I already have all of those within 350 miles of Boone, so right now counties are a lot more convenient. And every county—even the impossibly flat ones along the coast—must have a high-point somewhere. Out in that bayou, there has to be a hummock. So what if nobody in the courthouse knows where it is? That just adds to the challenge.

My collection of county high-points.
A green state is our highest award.
Yellow marks contiguous counties,
 and the blues are outliers. 
To see Charlie's map, click here.

     County high-pointing might be described as a cross between geocaching and jigsaw puzzles, or trivial pursuit and trespassing. 

     County high-pointers might be considered the nerds of the hiking world, competing on foot and online for points that most people would consider worthless. There are hundreds of us, and we are mostly harmless as blacksnakes. Leave us alone and we'll soon move on.
     If climbing Everest or Denali is Herculean, then county high-pointing is Sisyphean.
     You remember Sisyphus, the mythical Greek king who was condemned to push a stone uphill for eternity? He could be the patron saint for county high-pointers. No one has ever visited the highest point in every county. Realistically, no one ever will. 
     In fact, only one person had completed South Carolina before Charlie Zerphey and I—combined age 144—gang-tackled my home state last week.

     Charlie started climbing the state high-points in 1995 after he retired from a newspaper pressroom in Pennsylvania. By 2000, he had 49 states (and I wouldn't bet against him yet in Alaska). Then he refocused on county high-points, and by 2012 he had visited the highest point in every county from Maine to Virginia.
     It might not be too challenging to complete a state—turning it green on our computer-generated maps—if all the points were well-defined and on public property. But county high-pointers have to contend with incorrect or inexact maps, trigger-happy hunters and farmers, and dogs and signs that don't welcome strangers to the knoll in the backyard. Getting close doesn't count.  

     A retired Navy officer from New Jersey named Michael Schwartz was the first to complete the counties of South Carolina. When he finished in 2009, he had to visit nearly 200 locations in 46 counties, including 42 virtually equal possibilities in Dorchester County and 29 more in Williamsburg. Depression-era USGS topographic maps were the best we had then, and though they are wonderfully detailed works of art, they weren't designed to pinpoint county highpoints.

     The puzzle is a little easier today, thanks to precise aerial mapping and newfangled satellite data. Working with GIS officers in several counties and a GIS grad student at Appalachian State University named Zaak Havens, we were able to narrow down the possibilities to about 80 locations statewide. Before last week, Charlie had 21 of South Carolina’s 46 counties, and I had 23. The way the map worked out, we each had to finish several counties individually in addition to 15 together.

You can worship with the Presbyterians
 atop the highest hill in Chester County.

     I was surprised to discover that Union has the best view of any county high-point in South Carolina. Spartanburg also has untapped views—there is a private observatory (not to mention a caboose) hidden atop Bird Mountain. And you won't find a prettier zenith than Zion Presbyterian Church on the Chester highpoint.
     If you're perversely inspired to follow in our footsteps, start here. You can drive almost to the top of Sassafras Mountain, the highest point in Pickens County and the entire state. (See how Sassafras is about to become a showplace.) Greenville’s Coldbranch Mountain and Oconee’s Fork Mountain are remote, but you don't have to be a hardened mountaineer to get there. 
     Some county high-points are easy. You barely have to get out of your car to claim Charleston or Richland.   
      On the other hand, you need a boat to visit the Georgetown high-point. You have to brave a swamp in Horry and outwit hunters in Calhoun and Jasper. You may need military clearance in Beaufort and landowners' permission in probably half the counties. High-pointers have to be willing to knock on the doors of strangers. 
     The walks are often short, though not necessarily easy. The maddening challenge for county high-pointers is pinpointing the spot where you need to go. Our No. 1 rule is that you can't claim the county if there's any doubt that you've touched the highest point. If the maps are inconclusive, you have to tag all the possibilities. Where the ground seems level, you are supposed to walk a grid over every molehill. That's why Schwartz spent most of a day in Williamsburg County tromping through fields, briars, and drainage ditches to reach dozens of areas that measured 95 feet above sea level. 

The sun sets on the highest hill in Dillon County.

     I got lucky on a visit to the courthouse in Kingstree and discovered that the northern corner of Williamsburg was marked incorrectly on the USGS maps Schwartz used. This discovery brought a low ridge into the county map, gave Williamsburg a 98-foot summit, and trumped all of Schwartz' hard work. We claimed Williamsburg in just a few minutes.
     On Wednesday morning, Charlie finished South Carolina in a backyard in Lancaster County, an appropriate bookend since he's from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Later that afternoon, I notched my final three solo counties, ending in the wilderness of Mount Dillon.

     I don't know if Sisyphus would be impressed, but I like to think the old guy would be green with envy. Because I’m moving on to other to-do lists, and he’s forever not.

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MAKING MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS

• If county high-points counted like home runs, Charlie with 712 would be approaching Babe Ruth. My pedestrian career total of 157 is more in a league with Tom Tresh and Clete Boyer. Click here for a list of the national leaders. 

• My drive to Dillon passed through the time-warp town of Clio, which took me back 30 years to another statewide quest. Clio (KLY-oh, not KLEE-oh) was one of the last high school football scores tracked down by the intrepid Terrell Watts on a Friday night in October 1984—the first time The Greenville News published a complete scorelist from every single game in South Carolina. Terrell and our Krispy Kreme-fueled Friday night crew turned that unprecedented accomplishment into an unthinkable streak: For more than 10 years and 13,000 games, we didn't go to press without every score in the state. It's good to once again have the entire state covered. 

• What’s next? Maybe North Carolina, which has only been completed once, by a state park ranger named Brian Bockhahn. North Carolina is twice as tough as South Carolina. It has 100 counties, including places like Hoke (whose summit is behind razor wire at the abandoned state sanatorium) and Tyrrell (where the high ground is just 17 feet above the tides. With 45 county high-points done in North Carolina, I'm not even halfway. 

My all-time favorite headlines

     This weekend marks the seventh anniversary of my all-time favorite headline. Not that one. This one: 

     That's how the Charlotte Observer captured the moment in 2007 when our little Appalachian State football team conquered Michigan.
 Sports Illustrated declared it "Alltime Upset" on a cover suitable for framing. But leave it to the old-time headline writers in Charlotte to make it majestic, just for us. Just like local newspapers used to do. 

 Never has more been said in just 10 counts.
 Of course, App-elation! was the way we felt up here in the mountains after the unbelievable drama and the unimaginable triumph. Mary and I held hands as we listened to the final heart-wrenching moments on radio. That's the only time I can ever remember a football game bringing tears to my eyes.
 App-elation! declared the seismic shock to the rest of the state in a way that no one could miss nor misunderstand. 
 App-elation! was also a pun mocking the way the TV announcers mispronounced Appa-latch-un, a Yankee indignity that only heightened our accomplishment. 
 App-elation! even got the hyphen right, which is more than I can say for Sports Illustrated.
 Maybe best of all, App-elation! was a newspaper loosening its necktie and coming down from its ivory tower to join the party—bringing along a 96-point exclamation point just for fun. Newspapers aren't supposed to take sides, which makes it all the more memorable when they do. (Lest we forget, the Detroit Free Press headlined that game APPALLING.)
 Appellation, appropriately, means a name, or the act of naming. That's what great headlines do. In moments like these, newspapers write history, the front page becomes a keepsake, and a great headline deserves to be autographed.
 Great headlines stick in your mind like a song. The best ones orchestrate multiple messages and nuanced puns.
 I wish I had kept a file of the best headlines I've seen over the years. I've been blessed to be there for the birth of a few of them. One moment, a fine bylined story is lying headless on the page. Deadline is only moments away. Then inspiration bursts out of nowhere, sort of like Armanti Edwards, and suddenly an anonymous ink-stained editor has the opportunity to make memories and express history in one-tenth of a tweet.

 Here are some of my favorites from my Civil War newspaper:

 And from my sportswriting days, here are a few more unforgettable headlines:

Shaw, Shank: Redemption 
 Lots of headlines borrow from movie and book titles. Too often, it's a stretch, like one I wrote about a Georgia comeback: "Dog Day After Swoon." But this headline in The State condensed all the key elements of last year's Missouri-South Carolina football game: a jailbreak performance by wounded quarterback Connor Shaw, a shanked kick that would have won the game for Missouri, and the championship implications for the Gamecocks. 

Madonna and the babe truth story

 My aunt Viola Griffin played in the girls' professional baseball league that inspired the movie, "A League of Their Own." While our sports editor Dan Foster was on vacation, I wrote a column about her experiences on the movie set and in Cooperstown. The headline is a play on "The Babe Ruth Story," a 1948 biopic that some critics call the worst movie ever made.

E Pluribus Union
 Monte Dutton once wrote an essay for The Greenville News about high school football in Union County, S.C. Two of the county's three schools were state champions, and the third program was on life support. That headline turned prophetic just a few years later when Union, Jonesville, and Lockhart consolidated into one school. Then they truly became the Latin we all know from the penny, E Pluribus Unum—Out of many, one.  

Tigers are 10-8-cious

 The Greenville News immortalized the score of Clemson's tenacious victory against Lawrence Taylor and North Carolina, the pivotal game on the way to the 1981 national championship. 
 And speaking of LT … 

Plunkett Plucks Theismann's Heisman

 Thanks to this headline, I remember the results of the Heisman Trophy voting from 1970 better than 2013. I've always attributed this one to Phil Batson at the Anderson Independent, but now that I think about it, in 1970 Phil was probably still down in Due West serving as manager for Red Myers, Elmer "Skip" Goley, and the Erskine College Flying Fleet. (There's some raw material for headlines.)
 Phil wrote some fine headlines and talked me into staying in the newspaper business when I was thinking about becoming a computer programmer. 
 One rule Phil taught me: If it's a good headline, it fits. Rearrange the page if you have to, but always make room for a good headline. 
 Times sure have changed. No matter how much we pull for the underdogs, newspapers and headline writers have no better chances anymore than Appalachian State does in Saturday's rematch with Michigan. But this remains true:
 Good headlines always fit.
 They always will. 

#LASTPRINTISSUE
     It's not so often that the news guys get to sprinkle sarcasm as liberally as we did in sports. Newsweek's last cover was like a bloody note scrawled by a murder victim, hash-tagging the villain.

Miracle: 327 survive
      A plane in Spain fell mainly into the cliched clutches of old-school headline writers, who dwelt on the death toll: "55 die in Spain crash."
      But on the day USA TODAY was born, an editor there had the wisdom to headline the real story: "327 survive."
      That headline set the tone for the early years of USA TODAY, when it revolutionized journalism. Now, the company has laid off almost all its headline writers.

The Elephant in the Room

     This was TIME magazine's epithet for Gov. Chris Christie, weeks before he blew his E-ZPass for the Republican presidential nomination. Even his own pachydermic party treats him like a fat kid. Nobody likes him but voters.