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GALLERY: 86 photos from Tuesday night's practice
C. Aluka Berry/caberry@thestate.com/
USC offensive lineman Heath Batchelor, second from left
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Batchelor living his last chance at USC
Troubled offensive lineman is ready to make one more go with the Gamecocks
He lost his starting position, fell a year behind in school and is one misstep away from earning a one-way ticket back to Haleyville, Ala. — this time for good.
Yet, South Carolina offensive lineman Heath Batchelor says he’s in a better place than when he left Columbia last fall.
“I feel a lot better now than last time I was up here,” Batchelor said Sunday at the Gamecocks’ media day. “Being home with my mom and dad and little brother kind of made me realize a bunch of things. I know what I’ve got to do now.”
Batchelor started six consecutive games during a stretch spanning the end of the 2007 season and the start of the ‘08 campaign. But he fell out of favor with the coaching staff as he struggled with what he described as personal problems.
After USC’s win at Mississippi, Batchelor took a medical withdrawal and returned home to Alabama to sort things out.
“I did some stuff I shouldn’t have been doing. Let’s leave it at that,” he said. “I had a problem with doing it when I shouldn’t have been doing it. So I had to go take care of those problems.”
Batchelor re-enrolled in June under essentially a zero-tolerance policy with the university. He is grateful for the second chance and understands he has to prove himself again — even as a redshirt junior entering his fourth year in the program.
“I expected to start at the bottom. I wouldn’t expect no less than to start at the bottom because I deserve that,” Batchelor said. “The way I look at it, I was like a freshman coming back in and having to work my way up. I’m just trying to do that every day.”
Batchelor always intended to get back to USC. But that knowledge did not make it easier for him to watch the Gamecocks’ final six games on TV last season.
“Every time I’d see them run on the field, it was disappointment, and I was just frustrated at myself because I had brought it upon myself,” he said.
After the holidays, the 22-year-old Batchelor began working out every day. He expected to be re-admitted to USC for the fall semester but said “a lucky turn of events” allowed him to return for the first session of summer school.
Officials placed several conditions on Batchelor when re-admitting him.
“He’s got all kinds of stipulations. He’s very fortunate to be here, as he knows,” USC coach Steve Spurrier said. “And he’s got to walk a tight rope, as they say. He doesn’t need to mess up at all.”
Batchelor summed up the stipulations thusly: “I have to do right. That was the one stipulation — do what you’re supposed to.”
From a football standpoint, Batchelor began preseason drills at the bottom of the depth chart. The 6-foot-7, 308-pounder reported to camp in good shape, but coaches believe there is more competition along the offensive line than when Batchelor left.
“Heath is doing everything we’re asking him to do. He’s just got a lot of competition right now,” first-year offensive line coach Eric Wolford said. “He came back in good shape. Just a little bit rusty, I would suspect.
“But the best part about this thing is we’re finally starting to get a group of guys around here that realize you better eat breakfast, you better get treatment, you better be in your playbook, you better do the extra things that give you an advantage over the guy next to you that’s trying to take your job. And I really like that.”
Batchelor, who played basketball and won state titles in the shot put and discus in high school, is working with the second team at right guard behind redshirt freshman T.J. Johnson.
He has three weeks to earn a starting berth for the N.C. State opener and two years to reclaim what he lost. He hopes to make the most of it.
“I know they went far out of their way to give me a second chance that they didn’t have to. I’m appreciative of that,” he said. “I have to show through what I do how appreciative I am.”
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