Silver Bluff hires alumnus Matt Hayes as new football head coach

           Aiken – Matt Hayes can’t think of a much better way to start his career as a high school football head coach than the opportunity he now has at his alma mater, Silver Bluff.

           “It’s very humbling,” said the 40-year-old Hayes. “This is my first opportunity to be the leader of a program. It’s a place that’s used to winning, expects to win. It supports football and football matters. This is a place that checks all of the boxes as a place of destination for me. I’m excited for this chance.”

           Hayes takes over for his former Silver Bluff teammate De’Angelo Bryant, who was a freshman when Hayes helped Silver Bluff win a state title in 2000 as a senior. Bryant left after six years to become the head coach at Gray Collegiate Academy.

           “He set the groundwork for this program to keep winning,” Hayes said of Bryant, who was 38-28 at SBHS, leading it to the 2021 AA state championship game and a 9-4 record this past season. “Even though I’m a little bit older than De’Angelo, we’ve been friends most of our lives.”

           Hayes was the associate head coach and special teams coordinator at Strom Thurmond the past two seasons. Prior to that, he was the defensive coordinator at South Aiken for five years. Hayes started his coaching career at Silver Bluff, working for his high school head coach, Al Lown.

           Hayes said what he will do defensively will be based out of a 3-4 odd front.

           “We’re going to be pretty multiple where we have guys to penetrate gaps, try to get speed and size in positions to be very aggressive,” Hayes said. “We want to be really good in our base defense where it allows those guys to play really fast.”

          SILVER BLUFF BASEBALL OFF TO SLOW START

          The Silver Bluff baseball team lost its first four games of the season, all of them Region 3-AA contests. However, the Bulldogs broke into the win column with a 9-4 victory over Horse Creek Academy on March 26.

         SBHS head coach Deon Williamson hopes that is the start of good things to come.

         “We’ve got a lot of mental mistakes and errors that are killing us,” Williamson said. “You make a couple and they just start piling up from there. We've just got to hunker down and stop making mental mistakes. One crucial error seems to cripple us.”

        Junior leftfielder DeShawn Wells is a returnee and is batting leadoff. Batting second is sophomore second baseman Quentin Cribbs followed by returning sophomore catcher Rivers Lumley and returning sophomore centerfielder Axel Hornung.

        Returning junior Landry Barfield is batting fifth and will see time at second, shortstop, third and the outfield. Senior Nolan Akins is in the 6 hole and is the starting shortstop. Rounding out the order are returning senior first baseman Tanner Noakes, junior AJ Fontanez and sophomore Owen Jay.

        Lumley easily had the highest batting average among the returning players are .333, whiles Noakes hit .207. Both had on-base percentages well above .400 as did Akins. Hornung (.395), Wells (.333) and Barfield (.310) all had OBPs over .300 despite batting under .200.

        The Bulldogs are counting on Fontanez and Jay as the top pitchers. Wells and fellow junior left-hander Bryce Foreman are supplying innings as are Akins and Cribbs.

        Silver Bluff went 3-11-1 last season and 0-8 in region play, missing out on the state playoffs. The goal for the Bulldogs is to earn one of the four spots in the state playoffs in the 5-team region.

        “We’ve got four region games to go when we come back from spring break,” said Williamson, whose team lost its 2-game series against Fox Creek and Batesburg-Leesville. “We still have to play Strom Thurmond and Pelion. We’ve got to continue to work and improve.”