Sweet victory! AC Flora wins school’s first football state championship
A.C. Flora ended 50 years of frustration for high school football in the Richland 1 school district.
The Falcons defeated North Myrtle Beach 42-7 to win the Class 4A state championship at Charlie W. Johnson Stadium on Saturday night. It was Flora’s first state championship in football and the first by a Columbia city school since Lower Richland in 1970.
It was Flora’s first appearance in a football state title game and comes four years after the team finished 0-10 in 2017. Since then, the Falcons are 28-5 including 19-2 under coach Dustin Curtis, who was an assistant at Flora for seven years before returning in 2019 to lead the program.
Curtis was overcome with emotion, tears streaming down his cheeks, as the final seconds ticked off the clock Saturday. The Flora players lifted their coach up on their shoulders as he received the state championship trophy.
“This is a place I wanted to be for a long time,” Curtis said. “It is a very special place I came to in 2009 and left for three years, but I am so excited to be back. This community is special and the support the administration has put in the program in the last 10 years and to culminate with this is special. … We want to be a program competing for state titles every year.”
A.C. Flora (9-0) was the second Midlands team to win a state championship this weekend. Dutch Fork won its fifth consecutive Class 5A title Friday. Camden lost to Daniel in the Bulldogs’ bid for a first championship since 2001. Hammond won the SCISA 3A championship last month.
Both Dutch Fork and A.C. Flora used dominating performances en route to the championship victories.
“We expected if we played a really good game then we could win,” Curtis said. “North Myrtle Beach has had a fantastic season. But if the kids come out and dominate like that, we will take it.”
A.C. Flora, which had been leaning on its ground game in the postseason, used its passing game to take control of Saturday’s game in the first half. Quarterback Ethan Beamish threw a pair of touchdown passes to Eriq Rice in the first half, and Matt Pack added a TD run with 20 seconds left in the first half to put the Falcons up 20-7.
Beamish, who transferred from Hillcrest High in Greenville, was 18-of-25 passing for 272 yards and three touchdowns.
“We have been working since the summer for this year and to see it pay off by a large margin is unreal,” Beamish said. “We knew we showed a lot of running on film especially in the playoffs. So we knew if we could throw it around a little bit it would really help us.”
Rice was the Falcons’ top receiver with seven catches for 117 yards and two scores.
A.C. Flora’s running game, which was averaging more than 400 yards a game in the playoffs, gained 211 yards and didn’t have a 100-yard rusher for the first time in four postseason games. Still, the Falcons averaged five yards a carry and had two TD runs of 30 yards or more by Markel Townsend and Terrell Coleman.
The Falcons defense, which has been rock solid all season, held North Myrtle Beach offense to 172 yards of offense. NMB running back Nyliek Livingston, who came into the game averaging 156 yards, was held to just 63.
The Chiefs’ lone score came off a Flora fumble after the first play of the game. NMB didn’t get inside Flora’s 20-yard line again until late in the fourth quarter.
“Best defense in the state, hands down,” A.C. Flora linebacker Max Childress said. “We are all brothers out there. We come out hard, play with emotion and we out play everyone. … We knew all along we had a really good shot. We worked hard and got it done.”
HOW THEY SCORED
First quarter
NMB - Montgomery 3 run (Smith kick), 8:54
ACF - Rice 45 pass from Beamish (kick failed), 7:31
ACF - Rice 34 pass from Beamish (Shangab kick), 2:15
Second quarter
ACF - Pack 2 run (Shangab kick), 0:20
Third quarter
ACF - Townsend 30 run (Townsend run), 5:16
ACF - Lofton 24 pass from Beamish (kick failed), 1:27
Fourth quarter
ACF - Coleman 60 run (Lee run), 11:03
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing: NMB: Lvingston 14-63; Hooks 3-30; Montgomery 4-0. ACF: Coleman 3-63; Townsend 8-60; Pack 13-41; Beamish 4-19; Lofton 1-6; Cunningham 6-2.
Passing: NMB: Freeman 7-14-1 38; Murray 1-2-1 43. ACF: Beamish 18-25-0 272.
Receiving: NMB: Moss 2-16; Anderson 2-15; Stanley 2-4; Webb 1-43; Smith 1-3. ACF: Rice 7-117; Lofton 3-36; Pack 2-44; Campfield 2-27; Pope 2-20; Holmes 1-17; McDaniel 1-11.
This story was originally published December 5, 2020 at 10:09 PM.
