Scotland competes in Beast of the Sandhills 7-on-7 event at St. Andrews

Jun. 28—LAURINBURG — It may have happened nearly a week later than scheduled but the first-ever Beast of the Sandhills 7-on-7 event at St. Andrews University still lived up to the hype.

Rain postponed the event on June 22 but a warm and sunny morning awaited 14 different high school football teams — which included Scotland High School — at the Knights football field on Wednesday.

"It's a great event because the entire Laurinburg, Scotland (County) community helped out," St. Andrews head football coach Bob Curtin said. "Coach (Richard) Bailey and the Scotland football team, we combined our event with their event and we brought great teams, they brought great teams."

Teams that joined the Fighting Scots at the event included North Carolina teams Fairmont, South View, Chambers, Douglas Byrd, Montgomery Central, Southern Lee, Lumberton, and West Columbus, and South Carolina's Latta, Buford, Cheraw, Ridgeland-Hardeeville, and Marlboro County.

The event began shortly after 9 a.m. and teams played on three different fields; two were for 7-on-7 competition while one was used for a lineman challenge, which Scotland wasn't a part of.

Scotland played in three joint sessions against the Cheraw Braves, Fairmont Golden Tornadoes, and the West Columbus Vikings. Scotland's first session was against Cheraw, who started on offense first and scored on three of their five total drives on offense; the Scots scored on all three of their total offensive drives.

"(Cheraw) was running empty sets the whole time," Bailey said. "We haven't been practicing against that a whole lot so we had to make some adjustments on the fly."

The Scots went up against Fairmont next and scored on all three of their drives on offense again, while the Golden Tornadoes took two of their five offensive drives in for scores. In their last session against West Columbus, the Scots scored on three of their four offensive drives and held the Vikings scoreless in all four of their drives.

"I thought we did well, I thought our effort was good," Bailey said. "The breakdowns we had were things where kids just weren't trusting what we coached them a little bit."

The Scots rotated between quarterbacks Ji'San McPhatter and Grant McCoy for all three sessions and had success with both.

Bailey thought his offense looked "really good for almost the entire day."

"I thought Ji'San did a great job throwing the football. He's always been good enough to be a starter, he just had the misfortune of playing behind somebody that was a year ahead of him and had a little more experience. So now that he's getting a lot of the reps, he's embracing it. We moved Shylan (Harrell) out to wideout, he was able to make some plays and he'll be a bonus for us out there. I thought Dakota Quick-Smith did a great job. But, overall, really proud."

Defensively, the Scots recorded five interceptions on the day and had some key plays made by their linebackers.

"Samier Pate was out here today playing a little free safety, I thought he did some good things," Bailey said. "A.J. McCallum was here today and he tore his ACL last year, and he made a couple really big plays for us; that's gonna be important. Matrice (McRae) was out here again; he was making some really good plays for us. It's just, can we keep those guys healthy?"

The Scots had a team competition on Thursday before going on a 10-day break that began on Friday. But for what his team has shown up to this point, Bailey couldn't be more confident in them this upcoming year.

"I feel good about where we're at," Bailey said. "For our first big 7-on-7, I thought we showed well. Our real strength is our offensive line and our running back, and they're all back. So, this 7-on-7 is nice, but that's not who we are anyway. We're gonna run the ball and be very good at that."

St. Andrews plans on continuing to welcome outside football teams and players to other events they host in the future. One event the Knights will have soon is a Monday night football skills camp starting July 10 for $10 a night. More information will be provided on the camp through their Twitter page at @StAndrewsFB.