Jojo English, Stanley Roberts, Jim Childers, and Gary Fulmer won back-to-back state championships in 1987 and 1988 for Lower Richland’s boys’ basketball team.
Lower Richland athletic director Debbie Wardlaw spent the past summer moving trophies out of the Diamond Hornets’ cases while the entire lobby outside the basketball arena was undergoing renovations.
While the process of taking inventory and moving the trophies was cumbersome, the sheer volume of trophies made something clear:
“Lower Richland has a tradition of excellence. It is a tradition of winning,” Wardlaw said. “Lower Richland’s rich heritage in athletics is the standard by which every- body else tries to measure themselves.”
One of the greatest eras of Lower Richland athletics was from the fall of 1986 to the spring of 1999. During that span, the Diamond Hornets enjoyed success in football, boys’ basketball, girls’ basketball, and baseball. They produced athletes who would go on to represent Lower Richland in the NFL, NBA, and MLB.
Jim Childers
The first major building block for Lower Richland athletics came in the late 1970s. After coaching at Thomas Sumter Academy and a stop at Wildewood Academy, now St. John Neumann, Jim Childers came to Lower Richland as a defensive backs coach under Marty Woolbright.
The 1987 4A State Championship trophy.
A 1970 graduate of Lower Richland, Childers was no stranger to the Diamond Hornets. He played football under former Lower Richland coach Mooney Player. Childers also coached junior varsity girls’ basketball.
In 1981, Buddy Mc- Daniel left Lower Richland leaving an opening for the boys’ basketball head coaching position. Childers was hired to replace McDaniel. In Childers’s first year, Lower Richland went 11-11. Then, prior to the 1982-1983 season, he brought on Gary Fulmer as an assistant coach.
A former assistant coach at Aiken High School under coach Randy Counts during his final two years attending U.S.C. Aiken, Fulmer saw Lower Richland as an opportunity to teach and coach. While he originally wanted to teach math at Lower Richland, he had to settle for teaching and coaching junior varsity basketball at Hopkins Junior High School. The Fulmers-Childers partnership began with a bang.
The 1998-1999 Lower Richland Diamond Hornets, led by Ed Scott and the late-Rolando Howell won the 4A State Championship.
“Jim and I just hit it off really well from the very beginning. It just clicked with us; we had a good relationship,” Fulmer said.
Fulmer guided the junior varsity team to a 17-0 record, while Childers led his team to a 24-3 record and a state championship, despite not winning the region title. It was a championship that would have implications Childers and Fulmer could not have seen coming.
Jojo English
The 1986-1987 season was an especially exciting time for the Diamond Hornets’ boys’ basketball team.
Jojo English discovered a passion for sports while playing basketball and football at Fort Jackson. Despite a future in basketball, English preferred football until the eighth grade.
He didn’t play basketball in middle school or with an AAU team. English only played at his home. It wasn’t until playing against four older guys in his neighborhood that English decided to try out for the Lower Richland boys’ basketball team.
Gary Fulmer was the Lower Richland head coach from 1988 to 1994.
Even though it required some urging for him to try out, English had long carried a passion to play for the Diamond Hornets. He had attended football and basketball games as a kid, going with his older sister. His sister even had Childers as a teacher.
“I just couldn’t wait to play in the Diamond Mine,” English said. “I was there when Carl Brown, Fred Watson, and that crew won the state championship, and I became friends with them later on in life. There was no other high school I wanted to go to because of the environment and how much passion they have for Lower Richland athletics as a whole.”
English wouldn’t be the only big piece to the puzzle for the Diamond Hornets, the operative word being “big.”
Stanley Roberts
Childers still remembers the first time he heard of Stanley Roberts.
David Williams, a former Lower Richland point guard and Roberts’s cousin, approached his former coach and asked if his cousin Wayne had told the coach about Wayne’s younger brother. Williams went on to explain the younger Roberts was still in middle school but was already 6’-7”. Immediately, Childers knew he needed to meet the tall middle schooler.
Jim Childers won three state championships during his time with Lower Richland.
While Roberts’s height stood out to Childers, his lack of skill on the basketball court did as well.
For Roberts, basketball was more of a family tradition and less of a childhood dream.
“I wouldn’t say it was a passion,” Roberts laughed. “I think I was kind of pushed into it. I did learn how to enjoy the game once I got involved.”
Despite having a brother, cousin, and a couple of uncles who all played basketball for Lower Richland, Roberts had never played organized basketball but was excited about joining the team.
Roberts started out on Lower Richland’s junior varsity team. Prior to his sophomore season, he attended the Alex English basketball camp at Eau Claire. During the camp, Roberts realized his skill level wasn’t on par with the rest of the players, and he had to make up his mind whether or not he wanted to play basketball.
Jojo English played in part of three seasons for the Chicago Bulls.
Helping him with that were his brother, cousin, and uncles. They took the young Roberts to Horrell Hill Elementary School and taught him how to play the sport.
“They pretty much beat me up for a month-and-a half,” Roberts said. “That’s where I learned to play. They literally beat me up. They would foul me hard until I got up and kept going.”
Lower Richland Basketball Team
By the fall of 1986, Roberts, along with English, Lonnie Klutz, Tracy Garrett, and Charles Jacobs, made up the core of Lower Richland’s varsity boys’ basketball team.
Most of the players had grown up together, playing basketball at Horrell Hill Elementary and Caughman Road Middle Schools.
“It really helped,” English said. “There is only so much a coach can do. When the players take ownership of the team and they hold each other accountable and everybody is playing for each another, the coach has to say very little.”
After leading Lower Richland to a state championship, Ed Scott went on to star at Clemson University.
While the friendship made it easier on the court, the real challenge was the level of high school basketball in Columbia in the late 1980s. Among the more dominant teams at that time were Eau Claire, Keenan, and A.C. Flora. Roberts said facing those teams on a regular basis helped him.
A year after posting a 19-6 record, Lower Richland improved to a 29-2 record and won a State Championship.
Defending champs
The following season, Childers was charged with preparing his team to deal with the rigors of being the defending state champions.
“We really didn’t have a problem with keeping the players motivated,” Childers said. “We had a great motivator on the side where I sat down, and that was the bench. I didn’t care who you were. We had some guys who could come in and play real good basketball. They fed off each other.”
Stanley Roberts was drafted in the first round, No. 23 overall by the Orlando Magic.
The motivation went well beyond the bench.
“Coach Childers had imprinted in our mind we were a winning program, and we should win because we were the most talented team,” Roberts said. “With that said, not putting Eau Claire or Keenan or any of those high schools down, but with our roster, we knew we would win. Also, we wanted to do it for the younger kids on the team; we wanted them to have that same feeling.”
Many of the key players from the 1986-1987 championship returned including Roberts, English, Klutz, and Jacobs.
Coliseum Game
Among the bigger games of the season for Lower Richland was the matchup with Eau Claire at the Carolina Coliseum, which came to be known as the Coliseum Game. It was so popular, when the junior varsity teams played prior to the varsity, there were around 5,000 fans already in the stands. By the time the boys’ game tipped off, there were fans sitting in the aisles.
Over a two-year span, Lower Richland faced Eau Claire eight times, posting a 6-2 record in those meetings.
“That really prepared us,” English said. “At the time, the Diamond Mine was one of the bigger arenas. Once we moved to the Carolina Coliseum, that first game especially, being on the floor in that atmosphere is something you cannot really put into words in a high school type atmosphere. Half of the building was for Eau Claire and the other half was for Lower Richland. It was competition at its highest level.”
National Tournaments
The Diamond Hornets also took part in regular season tournaments like the King Cotton Classic in Arkansas and the 7Up Shootout in Missouri. The tournaments exposed the players to teams equal or better than them in talent.
Among those were current University of South Carolina head coach Frank Martin, who was an assistant coach at Miami Senior High School, and Alonzo Mourning, who went on to star at Georgetown and the NBA.
As if the schedule weren’t challenging enough, off-the-court issues presented another challenge. Early in the season, Childers announced he was leaving Lower Richland at the end of the season to join the staff at Louisiana State University.
Recruiting also became a factor as English and Roberts were among the Diamond
Hornet players who were receiving college interest. English held a desire to play close to home. Roberts had his list narrowed down to USC, Georgia Tech, and LSU.
Despite the distractions, Lower Richland sailed to a 29-3 record and another state championship.
“It was a wonderful feeling, a great experience,” Roberts said. “To be able to do it for your school and represent your school in such a way was great. Those were some great times.”
Carl Williams
In 1995, Lower Richland welcomed another coaching legend to lead its boys’ basketball program. After coaching stops at Booker T. Washington, A.C. Flora, and Richland Northeast High Schools, Carl Williams took over as the Diamond Hornets’ head boys’ basketball coach.
“I knew what I was going into when I went there,” Williams said. “I had experienced that kind of situation at Booker and A.C. Flora. They were traditional winners. It was something I grew accustomed to. I wanted to be a part of something that successful. When you enter into those situations, you know there are demands to be met.”
To help him meet those demands was Ed Scott.
Ed Scott
Scott had been around Lower Richland basketball from a young age. He watched English and Roberts win state championships in the late 1980s.
Scott had grown up developing his basketball skills at Caughman Road Park with friends like Ivan and Rolando Howell.
Scott was placed on the varsity squad as a freshman in 1995. Rolando Howell joined the team a season later.
After losing to Irmo and Marlboro County in the playoffs during the 1995- 1996 and 1996-1997 seasons, the Diamond Hornets were poised to make some noise in the 1997-1998 season. Lower Richland made it to the semifinals of the 4A boys’ basketball playoffs to face Socastee.
The Diamond Hornets held a big lead during the game but were unable to hold on and lost on a buzzer-beater. Williams said he felt bad for his players and felt his team should have won the game.
The following year, Lower Richland entered the season as a Top-10 team nationally. Tournaments in Delaware and Hawaii helped prepare the team for the playoffs, but the goal was clear.
“Everybody made up their minds that winning the state championship was a must,” Scott said.
It was a goal the Diamond Hornets accomplished, winning the team’s first state championship since the 1987-1988 season.
Moving on
The coaches and players that brought the success to Lower Richland have since moved on.
Childers left LSU in 1997 and spent a year at Memphis University as an administrative assistant. Then in 1998, Childers returned to South Carolina to become the boys’ basketball coach at Spring Valley High School. In 2001, Childers left the sidelines and joined the world of administration. Since then, he has been an assistant principal at Spring Valley, where he remains today.
His former assistant, Gary Fulmer, was promoted to head coach of the Lower Richland boys’ basketball team following Childers’s departure. He remained with the Diamond Hornets through the 1993-1994 season.
Fulmer ended up at Richland Northeast High School the following season and remained as the boys’ coach until 2002. During that time he formed the Chick-fil- A Classic. He left Richland Northeast to take over as the athletic director for Richland School District Two for seven years before returning to the Cavaliers as athletic director.
Roberts spent two years at LSU before leaving for the NBA draft. He was drafted in the first round, at No. 23 overall by the Orlando Magic. During his eight seasons in the NBA, Roberts played for five different franchises.
English had perhaps the hardest route to his dream. After a four-year career at USC, English went undrafted. He started out in the NBA summer league with the Houston Rockets. Later on, he was brought in by the Chicago Bulls, who invited English in for a three-day, rookie free agent camp. English beat out 39 other players to get a spot on the Bulls’ roster.
English spent part of three seasons with Chicago, earning an NBA championship.
Following his time in the NBA, English got into coaching. During his career, English has won a state championship coaching the Sumter High School boys’ basketball team and is now an assistant coach at Catawba College.
Scott went on to star at Clemson University. In 2012, he began coaching AAU basketball and assisted Aaron Lucas at Richland Northeast until Lucas left following the 2016-2017 season. Scott also works for South State Bank.
Williams left Lower Richland in 2002 and is retired from coaching basketball but remains in the Columbia area.
Next Week: Lower Richland Baseball and Football
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