“Basketball was second”: Chapin basketball players remember Mark Snelgrove

CHAPIN, S.C. — If you ask any basketball player who played for Mark Snelgrove what his priorities were as a coach, each one of them will tell you the same thing.

Basketball came second for coach Snelgrove.

“He told me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do on the basketball court,'” Chapin senior Maddux Harrell said. “If you weren’t a good person off the court… he only wanted good people on his team.”

Success on the hardwoods did come for Snelgrove — he won a state championship at Midland Valley in 2015 — but it was never as important as the success he wanted to see from his players off the court.

“He focused on the kind of person you were becoming first, and then the basketball player came second,” junior Lawson Davis said.

Before the 2019 season, Snelgrove was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, forcing him to spend an entire season away from his favorite place — on the bench, coaching his boys into men.

On Sunday, he lost his battle with cancer, and the Eagles lost more than a basketball coach.

ABC Columbia’s Cam Gaskins caught up with some of coach Snelgrove’s players to hear about what kind of legacy he’ll leave behind in the Chapin community.