Banners hanging in the gym at C.E. Murray High School.
Photo provided.
With the state basketball playoffs beginning this week, one perennial name is missing and will never return.
C.E. Murray's boys and girls teams missed the playoffs in the War Eagles' final season before high school students transfer to Kingstree for the 2022-23 school year.
On Feb. 4, the War Eagles played their last ever game at the James Dingle Gymnasium.
The boys defeated county rival Hemingway, but the girls fell in a close game to the Mighty Tigers after losing their lone senior Cyiasia Singletary at the start of the fourth quarter.
“I broke down mentally,” Singletary said of leaving her last game at C.E. Murray with an injury. “I couldn't stop crying.”
From 2003 to 2005, the Lady War Eagles reached three straight state championship games, winning the first two. They won the state title again in 2008.
LeAndrea Montgomery, a C.E. Murray graduate, thinks his C.E. Murray girls team could have gotten to the state playoffs if the players had more experience. His team of mostly 7th, 8th and 9th graders were forced to play on varsity. There was no junior varsity team.
“We all know C.E. Murray has a history of winning. And I do believe that with these group of girls — they young. Those same girls that’s up there on that banner, played together ever since they were in rec,” Montgomery said. “These same girls played together since rec. Most of them should be on the junior high team, (but) because we don't have a junior high team they have to play varsity. So I do believe that within the next three or four years, they will be out there doing the same thing the old C.E. Murray did.”
The boys basketball squad does not have the same playoff history as the girls, nevertheless, the players still carried the weight of being the last team in the history of the school.
In the final home game against Hemingway, War Eagles needed to win to keep their playoff hopes alive.
“You got everything riding on your back, you'd be in the last class,” senior Queshay Gamble said. “We had a pretty bad season, and we just had to finish off strong. We want to make sure our fans would be proud of us.”
In an unprompted halftime speech to the crowd, coach Neilson Hilton, who had just returned to the team following a stay in the hospital, praised fans for their support on what he called a “sad day” for him.
At the end of the speech, Hilton, a 1988 C.E. Murray graduate who played football, basketball and baseball for the War Eagles, thanked all the coaches, teachers and principals, past and present, along with all the “C.E. Murray pride and family.”
“I appreciate you and we love you,” Hilton said to conclude his speech.
The banners with titles won by War Eagle teams hang in the gym, and Hilton hopes they will stay. C.E. Murray's building will be used by elementary and middle school students start next school year.
“Even if it becomes a middle school or whatever the case may be," Hilton said, "hopefully they leave the banners up just to show what has been accomplished over the years."
