2025 Player of the Year: South Pointe’s J’Zavien Currence
Arguably the most athletic play
J’Zavien Currence
J’Zavien
Currence
South Pointe | 2026
SC
made last weekend in his final high school game will not show up in a stat sheet.
In a decade, it won't be some footnote referenced by reporters or PA announcers commemorating South Pointe's 2025 Class 4A State Championship. Unless you saw it in person at South Carolina State's Oliver C. Dawson Stadium or happened to be watching the television broadcast at exactly the right time, for all intents and purposes, Currence's impact on the play never happened.
With the Stallions already leading by two touchdowns in the second quarter, Currence was lined up safety when South Florence attempted a mid-level route up the visitor sideline. The South Pointe senior had crept up diagonally from the backfield to 6 yards from the line at the snap, and a quick throw looked like it was going to sail over everyone's head.
That's when Currence pivoted, opened up his stride and tracked down the pass some 22 yards downfield as if it was meant for him the entire time. He made an over-the-shoulder grab that would make most receivers jealous. Ultimately, it was negated due to one of his teammates getting flagged for a holding penalty, thus no play.
However, Currence - also the team's starting quarterback - had already run for a touchdown (he'd finish with two touchdowns and 124 rushing yards). On defense, he'd already made two of his six tackles.
And now this absurd interception? Who care's if it didn't technically count; memories aren't wiped out like stat packs. How do you avoid this guy?
“You can't,” South Pointe coach Bobby Collins said. “People better stop throwing at him. When he made an interception, he made it effortless. His ball skills are his biggest attribute.”
Currence, the 2025 Prep RedZone South Carolina Player of the Year Presented by Harrison's, has been a growingly increasing part of the Stallions roster since he entered high school. In 2025, he went off unlike ever before.
He threw for 2,764 yards and 24 touchdowns while rushing for another 1,497 yard and 18 scores on the ground. If that wasn't enough to put him into the conversation for best player in the state, his natural position figures on defense did the trick. At safety, he put up 87 tackles, two tackles for loss, four interceptions, 23 pass break-ups and a forced fumble.
Now's a good time to remind everyone that he put up all those figures while playing against a tougher schedule than any other program in Class 4A and - this is key - essentially getting shoved into the starting quarterback role near the beginning of the season. He didn't start in the opening defeat against Hough in the Keep Pounding Classic, but came in during the second quarter of that game.
From the time Currence took over the starting job a week later, South Pointe ran the table and hoisted a trophy in Orangeburg.
“In the heat of the moment, I didn't really have much time to think about it. I just tried to win the football game,” Currence said about that game against Hough.
After that, though?
“Sometimes I surprise myself,” he said. “But it wasn't that surprising when it was happening. I've prepared like every rep was the Super Bowl with the game on the line. We never wavered. We never flinched. [It was about] being there every time the team needs you to be there.”
The University of South Carolina signee was a Shrine Bowl shoo-in for next week's top all-star event. And while he still intends to give it his all, he's also trying to appreciate what the last few years, months and weeks have meant. After all, high school will be over soon.
He'll leave with a state championship ring that he was fitted for on Tuesday and a number of other honors that haven't even been delved out, yet.
Currence earned all of it.
Ask him why, and he mentions the training that started when he was 4 years old in the same breath as what he and his teammates committed to last January after some of the transfers starting filtering into the building. Ask him when it hit him that all this was a possibility, and he goes from talking about that August Hough game straight into the come-from-behind win over eventual Class 5A Division II champ and rival Northwestern in September.
But ask his coach how it all happened, and Collins points to his best player not only being a potential Sunday guy one day, but how much reason Currence gave everyone to follow his lead in the here and now.
“Nobody in our program would disagree. It goes back to the way he practiced every day. Offensive side of the ball. Defensive side of the ball. Sprints. Working out. He let you know that he's that guy for our football team,” Collins said. “… When we came in, you saw a huge athletic guy who was still coming into his own. We had him at some corner, some safety, some nickel. Going into his sophomore year, we got him in some at receiver. But his junior year you started to realize he was one of the best players in the country.”
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