The following was published May 14 in The State (Columbia, South Carolina) and is reprinted here with permission.

The cardinal-colored ribbons have faded a bit, and only a few of South Carolina Aiken’s baseball players continue to wear them on their sleeves or uniform fronts.

The ribbons serve as reminders of the loss that has threatened to overshadow all the wins in a year of unprecedented athletic success for the school 65 miles southwest of Columbia.

Seven of the Pacers’ 11 teams qualified for the postseason in NCAA Division II, including the first NCAA appearance by the softball program and the first Sweet 16 trip for the men’s basketball squad. The baseball team is the top seed and host of the six-team NCAA Southeast Regional that begins today at Roberto Hernandez Stadium. (The baseball team would advance to the regional final before being ousted by Belmont Abbey.)

But the achievements have been tempered by the death of a men’s basketball player hours after the Pacers’ Sweet 16 appearance, and the news three weeks later that the No. 1 scorer and three-point shooter in the history of the women’s program had cancer.

Javonte Clanton, 20, a starting guard who played one season at South Carolina Aiken, died in a single-car accident the morning of March 18 in West Virginia after apparently falling asleep at the wheel while driving through the night on his way home to Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

The school held a candlelight vigil for Clanton, and his USCA teammates bused to Ohio for the funeral, which Clanton’s grandmother said was attended by 1,500 people.

As life was returning to normal at the 3,250-student school, the athletics department was shaken again in April when senior guard Meredith Legg learned she had a malignant melanoma at the back of her left eye.

Legg, who became the school’s career scoring leader in her final game, met with a specialist in Philadelphia and underwent a week of radiation treatments. Doctors believe they removed all of the cancer, but there are concerns Legg could lose vision in the eye.

USCA Athletics Director Randy Warrick, who has been at the school for 31 years as a coach and administrator, cannot remember a year like this one.

“At a time when we’ve had a lot of success, it’s still been a difficult time,” Warrick said. “If there’s anything we learned, it’s that winning or losing games is not as important as we make it out to be. We all want to win ... but when you have something like this happen, it really does put all that in perspective.”

Javonte Clanton, 1988-2009

Clanton arrived in Aiken last August determined to make the most of his third and likely last chance at college basketball. After transferring from Niagara and getting kicked off the team at Blinn (Texas) Junior College, the 6-1 guard came to USCA after Colorado pulled its scholarship offer following Clanton’s troubles at Blinn.

Clanton, one of five finalists for Mr. Basketball in Ohio in 2006, played in only four games at Niagara before transferring after a legal issue. According to The Associated Press, Clanton was one of five Niagara players accused of assaulting a Niagara baseball player on August 31, 2006. Clanton performed 30 hours of community service as part of an adjournment to have a charge of disorderly conduct dropped.

Clanton averaged 10.5 points per game at Blinn and signed with Colorado in November 2007. But he was booted from Blinn when coaches learned he planned to leave early for spring break while the team was preparing for the postseason. Brenda Clanton said Javonte left to attend the funeral for his great-grandmother in Detroit.

USCA coach Vince Alexander, who played at Blinn, brought Clanton to Aiken after the player told him he would take his academics seriously. Alexander’s staff saw Clanton’s work ethic during one of his first days on campus.

As players were leaving USCA’s Convocation Center after a team meeting, coaches watched Clanton detour toward the baseball field and run hill repeats. He attacked practices with the same zeal.

“He’d work himself into a lather,” assistant coach Brett Longpre said. “You could see (the sweat) just dripping.”

Clanton followed through with his promise to make a commitment to his classwork. He had a 3.75 grade-point average and made the dean’s list in the fall.

“Javonte had really grown up here,” Alexander said. “He wanted to make it because he had already been a couple places.”

Clanton started 32 of 33 games as the Pacers went 25-8 and advanced further in the postseason than they ever had. He led the team in assists and was the third-leading scorer at 11.9 points per game.

After USCA lost at Augusta State, 85-57, on March 17 in the NCAA round of 16, Clanton and teammate Cody Ballard, another Columbus native, made plans to leave that night for Ohio. The Pacers missed spring break the previous week while they were playing, and Clanton and Ballard wanted to visit their families.

Ballard ended up riding with friends back to Ohio and left earlier than Clanton, who apparently returned to campus, packed and e-mailed a professor to say he wouldn’t be in class before setting out on the 570-mile trip from Aiken to Reynoldsburg.

About 6:30 a.m., Clanton called his grandmother from his cell phone and asked her what time sunrise would be.

“I told him what you should do is just stop and get something to eat and rest a little bit,” Brenda Clanton said. “He was OK; he really didn’t sound tired.”

Before hanging up, Javonte Clanton told “Grammy” he loved her.

An hour and a half later, he was dead.

Authorities say Clanton was traveling 75 mph, five above the speed limit, on I-77 near Fairplain, West Virginia, when his 2002 Chevy Malibu veered into the median, flipped and struck a large tree. A spokesman with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Depatment said Clanton was ejected from the car, which was torn into three pieces, one of which came to rest on Clanton’s right arm.

There were no signs of braking or corrective steering at the site of the wreck, which occurred a few minutes after 8 a.m. Investigators believe Clanton fell asleep, 125 miles from home. He was pronounced dead of multiple injuries at the scene.

As she grieved, Brenda Clanton said she wondered, “Lord, why didn’t you let him come home so I could hold him one more time?”

But she found some peace when she viewed her grandson’s body and saw minimal visible injuries — cuts on his lip and nose and a bruise under his eye.

“He did let him come home,” she said. “From what I’ve seen of the car, He did let him come home.”

Ballard arrived home at about 7 the morning of Clanton’s accident. He went to bed but was awoken a couple of hours later by a phone call from USCA assistant coach Nate Davis, informing Ballard his teammate was dead.

Besides the shock and sadness, Ballard said players felt guilty, thinking they could have prevented Clanton’s death by beating Augusta State and moving on in the tournament.

So many students turned out for a candlelight vigil on campus that officials ran out of candles. The next week, Alexander took his players, coaches and members of the dance and cheerleading teams to Ohio for the funeral.

The drive up I-77 through West Virginia was difficult.

“It seemed like the closer we got to Ohio and the closer we got to where we heard the accident happened, you could see it in everybody’s face – it’s real,” said forward Chris Commons, another Ohio native. “We’re about to go to his funeral.”

Commons, Ballard and a couple of other players recently returned to Columbus to play in a memorial tournament for Clanton. They hoped basketball would serve as an escape, but it only made them miss their friend more.

“It was weird,” Commons said, “because there was one player missing.”

Lucky to be alive

USCA women’s coach Mike Brandt said he should have figured something was wrong when Meredith Legg started missing foul shots. A career 92 percent free-throw shooter, Legg hit 81 percent of her attempts during her senior season.

Legg, 22, who is nearsighted and wears contact lenses, had an eye exam in February that revealed the vision in her left eye had worsened. After her doctor adjusted her contacts, Legg continued playing.

The 5-9 guard, who went to Hopewell High in Huntersville, North Carolina, finished atop USCA’s scoring list with 1,480 points and is the Peach Belt Conference’s career leader in three-pointers with 311.

A few weeks after the season ended, Legg went to the school nurse complaining of blurred vision. She visited doctors in Aiken and Augusta before going to Philadelphia to see Carol Shields, an expert in ocular oncology and a former Notre Dame basketball player.

Shields determined the 10-millimeter tumor behind Legg’s left eye was a melanoma, which is more commonly associated with skin cancer.

“They said if you hadn’t found this, there’s no good diagnosis. It can take your life,” Legg said. “So that’s kind of scary.”

Shields recommended Legg undergo a week of radiation, which likely would kill the cancer but could leave her blind in that eye.

“I was scared, of course. But I also didn’t weep or cry immediately,” Legg said. “I just said that whatever it takes, I have to graduate in three weeks.”

A USCA booster selling $5 car decals of Legg’s jersey number (24) has raised $3,000 to help with the family’s medical bills. Brandt forwarded 150 e-mails to Legg, written by fans, opposing coaches and a woman who had survived eye cancer and read about Legg’s situation.

When her family began filling its BMW SUV with the flowers, cards and packages Legg received during her week in Philly, she said “it looked like we had Christmas.”

Legg was touched by the response from the university and the Aiken community, and figures part of the generosity was prompted by fear.

“They were scared,” she said. “They didn’t want to lose another basketball player in a couple weeks.”

Legg wears a patch over the eye and uses a bag of frozen peas to help reduce the swelling. She has lost 10 pounds since the radiation and wakes up every three or four hours at night to take pain medication to quell the throbbing in her head.

But things could be worse.

Legg returned to campus last week to receive her degree in business administration – she had a 3.7 GPA entering her final semester in the honors program – and starts a job with an Aiken engineering consulting firm in July.

“I’m lucky to be alive is how I really look at it,” she said. “If I have to lose my sight over saving my life, there’s really no option there.”

Lasting memory

It seems any time one of the Pacers’ athletics teams does something good this year, something else goes awry.

After pitching a complete game in USCA’s Peach Belt-clinching victory against UNC Pembroke, right-hander Clayton Knight tore ligaments in his non-throwing shoulder while getting mobbed by his teammates during the celebration. Knight will not pitch this week when the Pacers look to earn their first berth to in the Division II College World Series.

The baseball team will try to end a tumultuous year on an uplifting note.

Clanton’s mother, Sharonda, and his grandmother were in Aiken last month for the Pacers’ athletics banquet to present the basketball MVP award, which was renamed in honor of Javonte. This year’s award was shared by the Pacers’ five seniors, several of whom called Brenda Clanton on Mother’s Day to tell her they were thinking about her ... and Javonte.

“He’s going to be remembered forever,” Brenda said.