One of the big news items over the weekend for this community focused on the Hartsville High School Boys Baseball Team. They were in the State Championship playing Eastside of Greenville in the second of a best-of-three series. They had been killed in the first game.
The second game started badly for the Foxes but they pitched and hit their way back making up a large deficit and taking a 9-8 lead before giving up two runs at the end of the game to lose the Championship series 10-9. It was an amazing comeback for that team and will give them stories they will still be telling grand children 50 or more years from now.
As sort of a side light on the baseball game, the Hartsville High graduation was held last Friday morning with about 240 students getting their high school diploma. The valedictory speech was given by Braden Mays who also happens to be the starting catcher on the 2022 Red Fox Baseball team. His talk focused on the lessons he learned from his playmates during this past amazing season. I think he is heading to Clemson for his college experience.
And the end of last week was a big time for the graduating seniors at other schools in Darlington County. The Governors's School of South Carolina, located in Hartsville; at Mayo High School a magnet school in Darlington County, at Lamar High School and at Darlington High School all said good bye to their seniors. Think about it, our community has just graduated more than 600 children beginning to look for their productive place in our world. That by itself is exciting!
One of the big things happening in Hartsville over the Memorial Day weekend was the opening of NEPTUNE ISLAND, our city-owned-managed Water Park that is a visitor magnet. Driving past the Park on Saturday, Sunday and Monday it appeared full of visitors. The mostly blue skies with occasional fluffy clouds made for a pretty perfect water park weekend.
Neptune Island is a fun-in-the-sun kind of place with water amusements including some real high water slides and toddler friendly splash pad places that seem ready to delight nine months to 15 years. Those older can really enjoy the complete freedom of just sort of roasting in the sun or renting a cabana and finding a way to just enjoy sights and sound of people having a good time.
Driving around on Monday Suga Rush had a customers in their new summer hours and there were also customers out at the tables at the Sweet Shop on College Avenue. This note about these two businesses that supply lots of sweets and in particular ice cream is important because not long ago it was not easy to find ice cream dipping in our City. Hope you all are getting your cones, your milk shakes and other sweet treats -- they add another cool option for us in this small town.
Generally it appeared fairly quiet on Monday afternoon as many of the busy restaurants opted to give their employees some downtime for the holiday weekend.
Hartsville is rapidly moving into Summer mode -- It would be interesting to hear some of the activities you are looking forward to in and around our community.
