Jim T Hanna

Realignment has its challenges for area AAAA teams

Conway and Carolina Forest weren’t necessarily dealt the greatest of hands when the S.C. High School League released its realignment plan for the 2012-2014 school years on Monday.

The two area Class AAAA schools remained in Region VI. However, Lugoff-Elgin, which is currently a member of that region in football, will move to Region IV beginning in 2012. That leaves Conway, Carolina Forest, South Florence, West Florence and Sumter searching for a game that would be normally taken up by a region opponent. In the point-system playoff format of the state’s biggest class, both local teams are now thinking about finding another opponent that won’t detract from postseason chances.

“There’s no doubt that that’s our biggest concern: Finding quality AAAA opponents outside our region,” Conway coach Chuck Jordan said Monday. “You can’t go east – there’s an ocean. You can’t go north. You can’t go west – that’s our region. So we have to go south.”

Awards keep coming for St. James baseball as All-State, postseason honors handed out

Days after St. James beat Union County to win the Class AAA state baseball championship, the Sharks were awarded several more pieces of hardware.

Senior shortstop Gunnar Heidt was named the Class AAA Player of the Year and Robbie Centracchio earned Coach of the Year honors in awards handed out by the South Carolina Baseball Coaches Association on Tuesday.

Along with Heidt, fellow Sharks seniors Gunnar Kines, Anthony Cossentino and Tanner English were AAA All-State selections as was Myrtle Beach senior pitcher Alex Roberts while Waccamaw senior pitcher Dylan Lee was a AA All-State pick.

Jordan said that more than likely, the leftover Region VI teams will have to “marry” themselves to those in Region VII – which is the Charleston-area division made up of Cane Bay, Goose Creek, Stratford, Wando and West Ashley. Those two regions are the only five-team divisions in Class AAAA.

“The realignment process is a very difficult process,” Jordan said. “ ‘Am I going to look at conformity or am I going to work with [geography]?’ I think the High School League really did the best they could. As I looked at it, the Upper State is real clean. It works out real well for those guys. It’s mostly just geography.

Enraptured: HANNA (OST) by The Chemical Brothers

We seem to be living in a new golden age for film soundtracks, or at least film soundtracks which stand up as albums on their own merits, independent of visual accompaniment.  Popular musicians like Trent Reznor ( The Social Network ), Daft Punk ( Tron Legacy ) and Alex Turner ( Submarine ) have all recently recorded film scores which have received much critical acclaim not just as soundtracks, but also as original musical works.  Along with the consistently captivating work of Clint Mansell ( Requiem For A Dream , The Fountain , Moon etc) and Hans Zimmer's increasingly experimental post- Batman renaissance, these recordings seem to form the vanguard of a new generation of film soundtracks which hark back to impact-making '70s classics such as Saturday Night Fever and The Taking of Pelham 123 , albeit with a fresh, post-millennial aesthetic.  The latest addition to this canon of new and exciting film scoring is the Chemical Brothers' sublime soundtrack to the 2011 UK/US/German film Hanna .  Despite being known primarily for their pounding electronic beats and funky synth work, the sound of this recording by the Chemical Brothers is a remarkably varied one, and very much inkeeping with the themes of the film itself.  The soothing chimes and vocal samples of opener Hanna's Theme give way to the ominous, bassy pulse and oriental melodies of Escape 700 , nicely capturing the idea of lost innocence which is central to the movie's plot.  The closest the soundtrack comes to having a recurring leitmotif is the charming, playful whistling of The Devil Is In The Details , which as well as being an infectious melody is symbolic of the corrupted fairytale to which it forms an accompaniment.  The tune turns up again in the churning Euro-funk of The Devil Is In The Beats , which if ever released as a single would justly be a massive hit.  Spacey electronics abound on tracks like The Forest and Marissa Flashback , and the Brothers are in more familiar territory with the myriad samples and majestic keyboards of Quayside Synthesis , Bahnhof Rumble and Car Chase (Arp worship) .

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