By MIKE ROSIER/Sports

Published on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - 2:53pm |

• Sports

NORTH AUGUSTA – Local products McKenzie Talbert and Anne Marie Covar practiced for success at the Carolinas-Georgia Junior Championships held over the weekend at Mount Vintage Plantation and their performances certainly reflected the added work.

Talbert, recently named the top female junior in South Carolina, finished in third with a two-day tally of 152 (78-74) while Covar took a healthy finish at sixth with a total of 155 (75-80).

North Carolina’s Katherine Perry of Cary, NC, and the University of North Carolina, showed why she is the top-rated junior girl in the Tarheel state after winning the girls competition by six shots in posting a 146 (76-70) after closing strong with a two-under round on Monday.

Meanwhile, James Chapman of Gastonia, NC, and Appalachian State, made it a sweep of the event for Tarheel golfers after winning the boys competition with a five-under total of 139 (70-69).

By JOE BRADY/Columnist

Published on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - 3:22pm |

• Opinion

Lonnie Mons did not have an easy life.

Known as L.P. to all of his friends (and not that he had very many of those), he looked back on his young twenty years and wondered what had taken him to this point in his life. Born in Barnwell, South Carolina he remembered vividly growing up with an empty stomach and tattered clothes.

One of the oldest of eight children he had learned at an early age that if you expected to eat you had to work. He had started out as a farm laborer at the ripe old age of six - when the plow was taller than he was.
 
He reached up to absently scratch his head, remembering the pain he felt as the plow handles would render him almost unconscious, blood streaming down his face in rivulets as he doggedly pulled himself back up and continued to plow, his small hands bleeding at the blisters lining his palms. But he never complained. Not L.P., as he rose each morning at 5 a.m. to begin his work in the fields until now at twenty years old he had dreamed of a better life.