Long before Friday night lights, football pickup games were king

Every afternoon, circa 2018, around 3:30 p.m., out came the brown, battered football. 

Sometimes there were four boys at the park. Sometimes there were 14. 

By dinner, someone had grass stains, somebody was arguing over a touchdown, and the game usually ended the same way – with promises to meet again tomorrow. 

“Every game was like the Super Bowl,” Eli Beville said. 

They didn’t know it then, but they were building the foundation for some of the Lowcountry’s next varsity football players. 

Today, Hayes Goddard and Ashton Kellermann are rising seniors at Philip Simmons High School, while twins Caden and Eli Beville are seniors at Palmetto Christian Academy. All four grew up playing those pickup games at Codner’s Ferry Park, along with a rotating cast of Daniel Island kids who now compete at high schools across the Lowcountry. 

Back then, their biggest concern was finding enough players. 

“I remember being so excited to play and knocking on every neighbor’s door to get enough people to have a good game,” Goddard said. “Our only worries were if we had enough people to play and if teams were fair.” 

Games could last 15 minutes or several hours and happen as often as seven days a week. Kids arrived on bikes, tossed them in the grass, and started choosing teams. 

Mike Beville had a front-row seat. Caden's and Eli’s dad lives across from the park and occasionally joined the games as a full-time quarterback when the boys needed an adult arm. 

“I just miss seeing the bikes tossed on the ground and the sounds and sights of all those kids playing football, simple as that is,” Beville said. 

Simple did not mean tame. 

Hayes and Ashton often landed on opposite teams. Arguments, tears, chipped teeth, and even broken bones became part of the lore. Caden still remembers one particularly messy “mud bowl.” But whatever happened one afternoon rarely carried into the next. 

“No matter what happened, we would still show up the next day like yesterday didn't even happen and play just as hard as we always do,” Eli said. 

Eventually, pickup games became youth football. Youth football became Friday nights. 

For Caden, who now plays quarterback and wide receiver, those years left him with more than football skills. 

“Those games taught me things like grit and competition, but they mostly taught me how special a childhood can be,” he said. 

Goddard, now Philip Simmons’ varsity quarterback, needed only five words to sum it up: “That was my entire childhood.” 

Nowadays, the bikes no longer pile up beside Codner’s Ferry Park. Beville still looks across at it every day but says he hasn’t seen another group take it over quite like those boys did. 

The boys notice the difference, too. 

“Just thinking about it brings me back,” Kellermann said. “I didn’t really soak it in enough and wish I could go back.” 

This fall, Beville will instead find them scattered beneath Friday night lights. 

“My kids were shaped by that park in so many ways,” Beville said. “That park gave more joy and growth than any e-bike, gadget, away travel tournament, or material thing ever could.” 

And if the old crew ever wants one more game? 

“One-hundred percent,” Kellermann said. “It would be fun to be able to see how we would compete today with us being a lot different.”