When Smithville needed a catcher this past fast-pitch softball season, its lone senior, Tara Parham, stepped up to the challenge.
When I heard that Amory softball was hosting an alumni game/Senior Night/scrimmage, I was immediately excited at the thought of finally being able to attend a game after three and a half months.
Back in April, Amory’s five fast-pitch softball seniors thought the last time they would play a game on their home field came on the Saturday before their spring break, due to their season being canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Amory senior Emma Walker has played all over the diamond for the Lady Panthers, but her role as a utility player has been one of the things she has enjoyed most about the game of softball.
The Hatley Tigers were facing their toughest competition of the season in a spring break tournament in Biloxi and just hitting their stride before the season was shut down in March.
When the pandemic first started, we heard plenty about how athletes, coaches and the like weren’t as important as we all made them out to be or as to how they are paid and treated in the professional world.
The Amory Panthers know the ones who will be making the plays this fall, but the players up front will still be a question that is lingering after no spring football to groom a new group of offensive linemen.
Amory catcher/infielder Connor Stevens has been a force at the plate for the Lady Panthers since her eighth-grade year in both slow-pitch and fast-pitch.
The Hamilton Lions probably wouldn’t have played a spring football game, but second-year coach Wade Pierce was still looking forward to getting his team together to answer some questions that he had going into the upcoming season.
As writers and journalists, we all fancy ourselves to be storytellers.
With their entire team returning, plenty of optimism surrounded the Nettleton Tigers’ 2020 baseball season.
Hatley senior Emilee Slade can remember what feels like her most important moment on the softball field as a Lady Tiger.
About a month ago, I wrote a feature story with Auburn baseball coach and Wren native Butch Thompson, and something he said during our interview definitely struck a chord with me.
In a normal year Nettleton coach John Keith, despite being hired to take over as head coach of the Tigers in April, would have had several weeks of practice and maybe a spring game to be able to get a jump start with his new team.
The Hatley Lady Tigers never got to play in a home game in the shortened 2020 season, but coach Chris George could see them starting to turn a corner, despite limited playing time.
The Hamilton Lions had deep playoff runs the last two seasons, and despite early struggles during the abbreviated 2020 season, both outgoing coach Lewis Earnest and new head coach Dallas Flippo felt the team was going to turn it around for another playoff push.
Since the death of George Floyd on May 25, we have been flooded with plenty of images on social media – photos, videos and more. Some have been of violence and looting, and some have been of peaceful protests in different areas, including in our own state.
AMORY – Amory senior Madison Kirkpatrick has watched Mississippi State cheerleaders on the sidelines at games since she first visited Davis Wade Stadium as a child.
After winning just one game in 2019, Aberdeen second-year football coach Alex Williams was starting to see his team move in the right direction in the offseason.
Hatley first baseman/designated hitter Harley Gaston has been playing softball since she could pick up a bat.
The coaching carousel is what we all fondly call all these offseason coaching moves we have seen across the board in high school sports over the last few months.
Smithville didn’t have to look far for its next football coach as a familiar face was looking for the opportunity to return.
New Smithville boys’ basketball coach DJ Burress found the Seminoles as the perfect fit for his first head coaching job.
As places gradually open up and glimpses of how things were before the shutdown start to appear, any piece of normalcy coming back feels like a winning situation.
Smithville head coach Michael Campbell found an offer suddenly come up that he couldn’t turn down.
The Amory Lady Panthers will have a familiar face taking over as their new girls’ basketball coach as assistant coach Nathan Newell moves up to head coach this season.
Two Amory soccer players received additional postseason awards as senior Morgan Mitchell and junior Bryn Camp were both named All-State by the United Soccer Coaches.
It’s been a beautiful spring, which means we’re all missing the sports that should be going on right now.
Smithville senior Jordan Wardlaw thought he played his last football game with his older brother, Cameron, back in a first-round playoff loss in 2017.
Incoming Hamilton head baseball coach Dallas Flippo always had a hope to take over once his mentor and longtime championship coach Lewis Earnest retired.
A couple of weeks ago in the Daily Journal, all of its sports writers wrote a few paragraphs on the games we missed out on due to the spring sports seasons getting canceled.
Coming off his first College World Series appearance as head coach at Auburn, Butch Thompson, originally from Wren, had high expectations for the 2020 season full of success with the Tigers.
Aberdeen native and former Hatley and Hamilton girls’ basketball coach Terry Walters is getting back into coaching, being approved to be the new girls’ basketball coach at Oak Hill Academy.
Hatley’s new head boys basketball coach is a familiar face as Brandon Bell returns to lead the Tigers.
We’re now into our seventh week of school and sports being gone, and I think everyone has been searching for some piece of normalcy.
Games, playoffs and championships may have been canceled for the spring, but Smithville baseball didn’t miss out on having its Senior Night festivities last Monday night – social distancing style, of course.
Itawamba Community College has extended the deadline for video auditions for Indianettes and Color Guard to May 16 due to responses received about circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 virus and potential technical difficulties that come with submitting video auditions, according to Ryan To…
Nettleton has its next man to head up the football program, approving John Keith as its next head football coach and athletic director.
Ever since Hamilton coach Lewis Earnest told me he was retiring – I think I found out back in December at a basketball game – I knew that we had to give him a special sendoff.
It’s the end of an era in Hamilton as longtime coach Lewis Earnest has officially retired after 28 years – 26 of them spent at Hamilton.
AMORY – The NFL’s latest No. 1 overall draft pick and first athlete in sports history to be chosen in a virtual draft has an Amory connection as former LSU quarterback Joe Burrow was picked overall by the Cincinnati Bengals Thursday night.
Nettleton soccer has its two new head coaches as assistant coach Alisha Carrisoza has been appointed the girls’ head coach, and Mary Robin Coggin has been hired as the boys’ head coach.
To the senior class of 2020, and particularly to those of you I have gotten to know during the last six years, this wasn’t the way your senior year should have come to an end.
What was originally an expectation amid the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality last week as first school buildings were ordered to remain closed for remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, and then the spring sports’ seasons were officially canceled in turn by the Mississippi High School Act…
New Amory defensive coordinator Chris Shoup and head coach Allen Glenn, who worked together at Tupelo previously, had often talked about the possibility of Shoup coming to Amory.
When this pandemic, quarantine, shutdown or whatever we want to call it hit a few weeks ago and I realized we were going to be without games for the foreseeable future, I hit panic mode briefly and wondered, what kind of sports are we going to have to write about?
Jared Johnson saw his first spring training as a prospect in the Atlanta Braves’ system come to an abrupt end when the COVID-19 pandemic struck back in early March.
AMORY – Former Amory resident Charles Harris is chasing notoriety with the International Boxing Foundation while being a positive influence for youth. He lived in Amory from 2015 to 2016 and has relatives still living there cheering him along the way.
One of the first ideas I had when the COVID-19 crisis started was checking in with our athletes who were losing their final season of a college sport due to a pandemic.
Nettleton will be searching for a new football coach as Ken Topps is leaving after four years as the Tigers’ head coach.
