Tequon (Tater) Moore and Nolan Dixon are the Southside boys returning seniors as the Seahawks tip off the new basketball season Friday night at home against Columbia.

New head coach Trenton Flemming will be roaming the sidelines after replacing Davelle Whitney, who resigned to spend more time with his family after last season.

Flemming teaches 7^th grade Language Arts at P.S. Jones Middle School in Washington after coming to Beaufort County from Washington D.C., where he was a private player development coach.

The 27-year old Columbia, S.C. native was ready move closer to home after coaching and playing in Tennessee and Minnesota prior to going to our nation’s capital.

“I’m really excited to be much close to home and I’m grateful to all the people in the Southside and P.S. Jones community who have made me feel at home,” Flemming said. “I had several conversations with Coach Q (Southside athletic director Andrea Quinerly) and principal (Justin) Holt and decided, based on that, to get back to the high school level as a head coach. It’s worked out great so far.”

Flemming inherits a team that graduated most of its scoring and rebounding from last year, but has several of last year’s conference champion JV team ready to take over.

“Jeremiah Satchell, Josh Armstrong, Austin Gerard and a few others coming up from JV should really help us,” Flemming said. “it’s good to have Tequon and Nolan already familiar with the varsity level, so it should be a good mix of skilled players.”

Flemming considers himself a defensive-minded coach and says the emphasis has been on that end in most practices.

“I like to mix it up some on defense in the first half of games, then come out with something totally different for the second half,” he said. “We might play eight or nine defenses in the same game, or stick with whatever is working. We’ll press at times and play man-to-man some. Offensively, we’ll run when it’s there, but we need to be a solid half court team to win consistently. There will be times to free-lance and other times to just run the play. The key for us is to know when to do which thing. It will take time, but the talent is there and I’m excited to get started.