BLYTHEWOOD – On the 20th anniversary of the school’s first state championship year, the entire 2006 Blythewood High School football team will be inducted to the school’s Hall of Fame. They will be recognized during Friday’s home game against Spring Valley. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m.
In the first year of the team’s existence, the Bengals went 14-1, winning the Class 3A state championship with a 23-21 victory over Timberland at Williams Brice Stadium Dec. 2, 2006.
It was the first and only time Blythewood reached a state football final. The next year the Bengals went 10-0 under head coach Jeremy Saitz, but a preseason practice violation caused Blythewood to be banned from the postseason. The school presented the 2007 team with a Courage Award. The 2007 banner hangs next to the 2006 state title banner in the Blythewood gymnasium.
Three members of the team have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame: head coach Jeff Scott, quarterback Richard Mounce, (both inducted in 2020), and cornerback and 12-year NFL veteran Justin Bethel (inducted in 2021).
Scott, a Clemson graduate and son of former USC head coach Brad Scott, was Clemson’s offensive line coach in the early 2000s. He was the first head football coach at Blythewood at age 25. After his team won the state championship, Scott left to be wide receivers coach at Presbyterian College. He returned to Clemson as a graduate assistant under Tommy Bowden and was promoted to wide receivers coach when Dabo Swinney took over the program. He later served as a co-offensive coordinator, and under that title he and Tony Elliott helped the team beat Alabama for the national championship in 2017.
Scott coached at South Florida from 2020 to 2022. Currently, Scott provides color commentary for football games on the Clemson Athletic Network radio broadcasts.
Mounce, a junior quarterback in 2006, completed 203 of 327 passes for 3,336 yards and 39 touchdowns that year. He also rushed 187 times for 1,108 yards and nine touchdowns. The next year Mounce passed for 2,416 yards and 34 touchdowns and rushed for 700 yards and seven TDs.
Mounce won Mr. Football honors that year and was also selected Most Valuable Player in the 2007 Shrine Bowl, where he completed nine of 18 passes for 249 yards.
As a baseball player, Mounce went 9-2 on the mound and hit .427 with seven homeruns his senior year, helping the Bengals to the 3A Upper State championship game in 2008.
Mounce played baseball at Clemson for two years, then transferred to Charleston Southern to play football. Injuries hampered his college football career, but he passed for 1,145 yards and 10 touchdowns in his final season in 2011.
He also met his future wife, Katie, at the school. After college, he and Katie settled in Durham, N.C. While running a deck-building business, he served as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Durham. He earned a master’s degree in divinity. Mounce and his family later moved back to Columbia, where he now leads the South Carolina Study Center, a Christian study center at the University of South Carolina. In addition he is completing a Ph.D in Systematic Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Mounces have four children.
Bethel had a strong junior year as a cornerback and special-teams specialist, making 75 tackles and an interception in 2006. In his senior year in 2007 Bethel was named Blythewood’s Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Defensive Player. The school retired his No. 31 jersey in 2015.
Listed as a 6-0, 180-pound cornerback as a senior, Bethel signed with Presbyterian College and played four years with the Blue Hose, earning Second Team All-Big South honors three straight years from 2009 – 2011.
In the 2012 NFL draft the Arizona Cardinals selected Bethel in the sixth round as the draft’s 177th pick. He stayed with the Cardinals, excelling at special teams play, for six years. He also played with the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots, and Miami Dolphins. He retired from the NFL in 2025 with 282 tackles, 5 forced fumbles, 8 fumble recoveries, 25 pass deflections, 5 interceptions and 3 defensive touchdowns over a 12-year career.
Bethel lives in Tempe, Arizona, with his wife Breanna and their two children. In retirement, Bethel plays drums in the band House of Bethel with his brothers Dione and Gabriel, and runs the Beating All Odds Foundation, the mission of which is “to assist in the building and stabilizing of people and organizations with finances to be a positive influence in the community or provide a service that benefits the lives of others.”
As a part of that foundation, Bethel has run the Beating All Odds Football Camp at Blythewood High School every June since 2015. He was given the Order of the Bengal for maintaining strong ties with his school with his work with the foundation in addition to his charitable donations to the school.