Moving Company in Daniel Island

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – Head coach Clay White announced the 2021 Seton Hall men's golf fall schedule on Tuesday. The Pirates will participate in five events this fall.

The Hall will open the fall season for the fourth straight time with the Alex Lagowitz Memorial, hosted by Colgate University at Seven Oaks Golf Club in Hamilton, N.Y., Sept. 4-5. Last time playing in the event, the Pirates placed third in a large field of 18 teams with a 21-over-par, 290-297-298-885. Gregor Tait (Martlesham Heath, England) placed fifth among 96 individual golfers with a 1-over-par, 72-73-72-217. The three-round event is named in memory of the son of Seton Hall assistant coach Ian Lagowitz. Alex played collegiate golf at Colgate.

On September 20-21, the Pirates will head to Bull's Bridge Golf Club in South Kent, Conn. for the Hartford Hawks Invitational for the ninth straight time. Historically, this has been a successful event for the Pirates and 2019 was certainly no exception. In only his second collegiate tournament, Wenliang Xie (Zhaoqing, China) claimed the individual title and lifted The Hall to a third-place team finish. Xie's 10-under-par, 70-67-69-206 was the third-lowest par-72 three-round tournament score in Seton Hall history. Furthermore, he's only the fourth Pirate to finish a tournament under par by double-digits.

The Pirates will play the Georgetown Intercollegiate in Beallsville, Md. at the Members Club at Four Streams, Oct. 10-11. It will be the fourth straight fall competing in the event for The Hall. Last time, the Pirates placed 10^th, finishing with a 45-over-par, 291-295-311-897. Xie was again the top Pirate finisher among returnees, tying for 15^th place with a 4-over-par, 69-70-78-217.

Seton Hall will round out the fall season with a pair of new tournaments. The Pirates will play three rounds of golf at the Daniel Island Invitational on Daniel Island, S.C., hosted by Charleston Southern, Oct. 31-Nov. 2. Those who don't make the trip to South Carolina will compete at the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Championship at Montclair Golf Club, November 1-2. The event is in nearby West Orange, N.J. and hosted by Wagner College.

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. (WCIV) — Jeans's Bridal Shop, Auto Money Title Loans, and IHT Wealth Management in the Lafayette Village were gutted by a fire last night.

The fire started sometime around midnight, and investigators spent the day on scene figuring out what happened and what could be salvaged.

The iconic Jean’s Bridal Shop of Mount Pleasant was where bridal dresses, tuxedoes and even mother of the bride gowns were lovingly stored and altered for more than 40 years. When its roof caved in, months of planning were lost.

Kim Lamar was one of those brides who lost her dress in the blaze.

She remembers the exact time she heard that Jean’s was on fire, it was 7:04 a.m. this morning when her mom sent her a text about the fire.

Lamar said she looked over at her fiancé and said "my dress is burned!"

"Well I panicked first. Because I thought to myself, how am I going to get a wedding dress in ten days?" Lamar said.

"It's really hard to go into a bridal dress (store) and find a dress off the rack that you love and two that fits. I had ordered my original dress in November, months and months ago. It's sort of like the first thing you do when you find out that you are getting married, you find your perfect dress," she said.

Weddings are a big business in Charleston, which is a good thing today because the bridal shop owners say everyone in the wedding community was already working hard this morning to see how they could help brides like Lamar find the perfect wedding dress 2.0.

Lamar started making calls and although she was hesitant, she was able to find something she loved.

"(The dress shop owner) found me this beautiful dress which I love, I said I think I prefer this dress more than my original dress!”

Lamar was able to find a new dress, one she said she also loves, at White on Daniel Island. It needed alterations, which Roberta Fisher with A Stitch Witch was able to take on.

Those businesses were not the only ones that have offered to help brides and wedding parties in a bind due to the fire.

"The bigger the storm, the brighter the rainbow, is what I keep telling myself," Lamar said.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – City of Charleston leaders have been working for months to update a master plan that looks at the future of parks and recreation in the city. Using public input, outside consultants, and comparisons to various towns and cities across the country, the ‘One Charleston Parks & Recreation Master Plan’ is nearly ready to be adopted.

Tuesday evening, the findings of the plan were presented to the parks and recreation committee.

City of Charleston parks are a hit among the locals and tourists and leaders want to keep it that way. The plan takes city growth and a changing population into account.

“The City of Charleston has been looking for several years, a number of years, at updating our parks and rec master plan understanding we’ve had growth, changing population,” said Laurie Yarbrough, the Director of Recreation for the city.

The city hired a consultant and put out a survey to see what the people of Charleston are looking for in city parks.

“We need to figure out what our citizens want and need in terms of parks and recreation facilities and we need to grow with them and make changes,” said Yarbrough. “So, as new things come in new trends, new populations, new wants, we have to have those facilities for everyone.”

Findings from the survey and other methods of public input found Charleston residents would like to see more paved bike paths, art performances, concerts, and trails. For the most part, the responses were positive.

“Mostly what our residents said is ‘we love our parks, we want them updated.’ So, that’s a great thing to hear is ‘we love what we have and we want you to continue to upgrade and give us more new playgrounds, more pickleball courts,'” said Yarbrough.

The plan looks at all five districts in Charleston including the Downtown Peninsula, James Island, Johns Island, West Ashley, and Daniel Island/Cainhoy Peninsula.

“Folks don’t want to go from one side of town to the other. They want to be able to do the parks and rec activities in their part of town.”

You can read the full master plan here.

Next week, the Parks and Recreation Committee is expected to make a recommendation for city council to formally adopt the plan.

Daniel Island resident Emma Schimpf was recently named the MaxPrep female athlete of the year in South Carolina for her outstanding senior season as a member of the Oceanside Collegiate Academy girls’ golf team.

Schimpf’s biggest accomplishment during her high school career was a state record at the Class AAA golf state championship last fall when she carded a two-day total of 133 to win medalist honors.

Schimpf was 11-under-par for the two-day tournament and beat runner-up Sydney Roberts of Chesnee by five strokes for the match, which was held at Hackler Course on the campus of Coastal Carolina University in Conway.

“It’s pretty cool,” Schimpf said. “It’s a big honor that I will always look back on. I played really well during the tournament. The only bogey I had was on the last hole, so I was pretty much bogey free. I made a lot of birdies.”

Schimpf was a two-time individual state champ first in 2019, and again last fall. She has been the Lowcountry golfer of the year as well, including 2019 when she qualified for both the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the U.S. Junior Girls Championship. Schimpf also won the 2020 SCJGA Fall Challenge.

Schimpf comes from one of Daniel Island’s top golf families.

Her older sister, Abbey, plays for the University of South Carolina. The younger Schimpf decided to stay closer to home and will attend the College of Charleston this fall.

The Cougars will get an impact player.

“Emma will have an immediate impact on our program,” CofC coach Jamie Futrell tweeted on National Signing Day. “With her being local, I have been able to watch her develop into a great player over the past few years. She has shown the ability to play at her best in the biggest events.”

Schimpf is spending the majority of her summer practicing and refining her game. She is scheduled to play two tournaments, including the U.S. Women’s Amateur Qualifier, which was scheduled to begin July 6 at the Carolina Trace Country Club (Lake Course) in Sanford, North Carolina.

She is also scheduled to play in The South Carolina Women’s Open in mid-August.

But for now, she’s putting her high school career in perspective.

“It’s pretty crazy that it’s over,” she said. “It’s been a lot of fun, and I will remember my teammates, the practice and the matches. It was well worth it. Playing at the college level will be more competitive, and it will be more like the team aspect rather than the individual performance.”

Schimpf hasn’t made it official, but expects to major in business or health when she begins classes at the College of Charleston.

The ultimate dream for every high school coach is to win a state championship.

Bill Muhn did that dream one better, winning two at the South Carolina state meet in May when he led Philip Simmons High School to both boys and girls Class AA state track titles. Muhn is a 2001 Perkins High graduate.

“We thought our boys would struggle, but they ended up winning the title by 32 points,” said Muhn. “Our girls set the state record for the largest margin of victory every with 101 points and we were actually six points away from setting the state record for most points ever but dropped the baton on the last handoff in the 4x100 really with about a two-second lead.”

The two state titles earned Muhn South Carolina AA Coach of the Year recognition.

“You have to have things go right on both sides,” Muhn said. “It’s a mixture of having very talented kids who bought into the system and having very knowledgeable coaches.

“A lot of this is from going to Perkins. (Late Pirates boys track coach) Jim Hauser obviously had a major impact on my life in the way he had his program set up.”

Another part of the success story is that Philip Simmons High School opened only four years ago and Muhn has had both of his teams in the top 10 in the state each year. He firmly believes his Iron Horses would be celebrating back-to-back state crowns this year, but the 2020 state meet was wiped out by COVID-19.

“We only had two kids who had ever run track before when we started the program, but one was already a state champion,” Muhn said. “Down here, we’re allowed to use middle school kids, so seventh- and eighth-graders can run.”

Noah Ward, a recent graduate who is headed to Harvard, was that state champion in the 1600 meters and has collected 11 individual state titles during his prep career in cross country and track.

“He was the kid who kind of accelerated everything,” Muhn said. “He was the guy we could turn to and show everybody what it takes to hit your goals. He always did everything right and he also got his friends to come out and run with him, so he basically started our cross country and track programs.”

The talented girls team begins with junior sprinter NaJhyrai Watson, who won the 100, 200 and 400 at the state meet.

“We had two girls who could have won the title by themselves,” Muhn said. “One, senior Layla Simpson, got seconds in both hurdles races, won the high jump and was on the 4x100 team that dropped the baton. She was why we had such a big lead.”

Early start to coaching

Injuries cost Muhn his senior track season at Perkins and ended his collegiate career at Miami of Ohio, but he made the best of both situations by turning his attention to helping teammates, which ignited a passion for coaching.

Muhn was a junior on the 1999 Perkins state football team and an all-conference safety as a senior. He also placed ninth in the state in the pole vault as a junior but was sidelined by a hamstring injury as a senior.

“I started coaching Chris Skaggs on the pole vault,” said Muhn of his senior season. “He was a freshman my senior year and that’s how I went into teaching and coaching, because I really enjoyed working with him. He ended up winning the Sandusky Bay Conference that year.”

Muhn broke his wrist while vaulting during his redshirt sophomore year at Miami and ended up working with the team's decathletes on the pole vault while also learning the nuances of the other events that make up the sport.

“In pole vaulting, it’s not if you’re going to get hurt, it’s when,” he said. “But I got to work with the decath guys and learned everything with them.”

He stopped working with his collegiate teammates as a senior while student teaching at Edgewood High School. He stayed at Edgewood for eight years, teaching middle school math and coaching football and track before moving on to Fairfield High School, where he mentored Danielle Harding, who set a national record in the event before competing on the University of Cincinnati women’s track team.

Muhn finally had enough of the harsh Ohio winters and moved south to Charleston, S.C., in 2012, and took a job as a teacher in the Daniel Island system.

“I grew up going to Hilton Head for spring break every year, so I knew I liked South Carolina,” he said. “I knew I didn’t want to go to Hilton Head because I felt it would be too touristy and I’d never heard a bad thing about Charleston, other than it’s hot in the summer and there are bugs.

“I grew up racing sailboats on Lake Erie and I wanted to get back to the water. And I was kind of tired of the cold winters in Ohio.”

Coaching in Carolina

Muhn started coaching pole vaulters with the Mount Pleasant AAU track club when he got to the area, where he also started a family. His association with the AAU squad led to his interest in the Philip Simmons coaching position when the school opened in 2017.

“I worked with the Mount Pleasant club for two years, but got away from it when I started having more going on in my life,” Muhn said. “Daniel Island is a feeder school and when Philip Simmons opened up, it was literally on my way home and had my former students on the team, so I decided to do this.”

Philip Simmons is one of the smaller schools in South Carolina but is growing rapidly. Muhn’s family is doing the same with two kids.

A growing family has Muhn thinking about stepping down as head track coach.

“I wasn’t going to coach this year had we won both titles during the COVID year,” he said. “I was going to be done because I have a 5-year-old and a just-turned 1-year-old. My wife did a fantastic job of raising them while I was away at all of those track meets and practices.

“We’re still deciding, but I’m probably going to give it one more year because I want to see Naj through and get her to the next level. She’s getting recruited pretty heavily right now.”

He also doesn’t see himself getting too far away from coaching.

“My son is at an age where I want to start coaching his teams, or at least be around,” Muhn said. “I can get back into the Mount Pleasant Track Club where I wouldn’t coach him but could coach others. I definitely enjoy coaching and being around the sport. Besides, people are always looking for track coaches, especially pole vaulters.”