The hedges are ‘toast:’ South Carolina surveys damage from Williams-Brice field storming

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Tim Flanagan (South Carolina’s head groundskeeper) was at Williams-Brice Stadium past 3 a.m. Sunday (4 a.m. if the clocks didn’t fall back), surveying the damage.

He stared at what were once his magnificent hedges. Those beautiful Ligustrums were all gone. It was as if a tornado had swept through. Leaves were everywhere. Luscious bushes were reduced to a pile of sticks.

Scurrying through the rubble, random stuff kept appearing. Single shoes. Sunglasses. Aquaphor. Wallets. Phones. “It essentially looked like what a festival area would look like,” said Flanagan, South Carolina’s head groundskeeper. “The bushes on the student section side are toast. The bushes on the south end zone, there’s some holes there but they’re fine.” It was natural-disaster scene created by football euphoria.

The hedge-hoppers burst over the bushes and onto the turf just as the clock hit zero on South Carolina’s 44-20 upset victory over No. 10 Texas A&M. As the scene unfolded, Flanagan and his crew had no time to worry about leaves or branches.

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During his postgame inspection, Flanagan noticed some interesting things with the grass. Inside one of the palmetto tree logos, there was a softball-sized hole in the ground. It looked like someone took a pocket knife and dug out a chunk of the Willy-B field for their memories.

Then he got to the midfield logo. All the garnet and black paint was gone. “Why does it look like dirt?” Flanagan wondered. It turns out, fans gathered at the logo after the game and were rubbing their white rally towels in the mid-field paint, staining them garnet to take a piece of the night home with them. Even Flanagan was amazed by the creativity.

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South Carolina fans have only stormed the field twice in the past 13 years: Saturday and after the Tennessee win in 2022. Jordan Kaye/The State

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