“You could never expect something like that to happen on the first day of school.”

These were the words of Chapman sophomore Ben Rollins describing the madness that occurred in Inman on the first day of school.

On Aug. 17, Jemark Ballenger fled from police serving him a warrant and caused many schools in District 1 to lockdown, including Chapman. The incident greatly affected everyone at the school including the brand new freshmen and even some of the newly hired teachers.

Before the lockdown though, many of the freshmen were feeling the usual emotions about starting high school at Chapman.

“I was a little nervous because it was a brand new school, and I had never been in a school this large before,” freshman Anna Carter said.

Another freshman such as Banks Atkins knew what was going to happen.

“I was nervous but not too much because I had my older sibling at Chapman, so I pretty much knew where everything was,” Atkins said.

When the lockdown actually commenced, many people’s day took a sharp turn. New math teacher Drew Lipscomb had his first day of teaching thrown out of the loop because of the lockdown.

“It was madness,” he said. “I only had one class the whole day.”

The lockdown not only affected the students and faculty at Chapman, but also many other places in Inman including Inman First Baptist’s Daycare Center.

Social studies teacher Rebecca Williams had just enrolled her children into going to the daycare at Inman First Baptist and the scenario seemed scary for the mother of two small children.

“Absolutely it was scary, but the school was very good at keeping us updated throughout the day so we wouldn’t worry,” Williams said.

Many students were upset that they weren’t able to go to every class on one of the most important days of the school year.

“I was frustrated because I wasn’t able to experience my new school and everything in it,” Carter said.

Even though the day was scary and confusing, many said after the initial chaos they started feeling good and enjoyed the rest of the day.

“I started to become less nervous, I was feeling good,” freshman Colby Garner said.

“I want to praise all of the students and faculty for following the rules that day,” Assistant principal Andrew McMillan  said,”These types of experiences are why we practice drills.”

“I want to personally thank Dr. Timmons and Mrs. Driggers for training all the new faculty for situations like this one,” McMillan said.

Many of these faculty members and students will never experience another lockdown of this scale and be stuck in their second block class for the whole day, but one thing is for sure: they will never forget the craziest first day of school Chapman High School has ever seen.