I can remember the day well when I was sitting in the office of The Meridian Star and read the press release where the Mississippi Association of Junior and Community Colleges announced that they were doing away with slow-pitch softball.
I wrote an opinion piece saying that it was only a matter of time before slow-pitch softball died in the state and fast-pitch took over as the dominant sport.
Well, most of that has come true. Slow-pitch softball is dying a slow death but will probably be around for years to come as it gives coaches a good reason to practice defense in the fall. And as long as the MHSAA is making some money off the state tournament, I’m sure it will continue on for years to come.
I remember when Clarkdale was the first school in the area to play fast-pitch softball but many others weren’t far behind. I also remember thinking that it wouldn’t be long before the Southeastern Conference would fo
llow suit and start to become competitive with the West Coast teams that dominated the sport for years.
Now lets fast forward some 20-plus years to 2017. Ole Miss recently pulled off one of the more amazing things I have seen in some time. The Lady Rebels entered the SEC Tournament as the No. 11 seed and won the entire thing, beating Florida, LSU and Alabama along the way. Honestly, if that had been men’s basketball or even baseball, ESPN would still be talking about it.
I recently got the opportunity to talk with former Newton County standout Ashton Lampton who started for two years at Ole Miss. As a freshman, Lampton and former Neshoba Central standout Hailey Lunderman made up an all-Mississippi side of the infield, a rarity indeed.
For some reason, SEC schools just don’t recruit in-state players. This past year, only one player in the state of Mississippi signed to play with an SEC school and that was Grace Dabbs from Leake Academy.
While Leake is certainly one of the top private school programs in Mississippi, it’s still a small private school. And for full disclosure I helped coach softball there for two years.
So how did Dabbs get to Mississippi State? How did Lampton and Lunderman get to Ole Miss? The answer is simple, it’s called tournament ball.
In talking with Lunderman, she confirmed exactly what I have known all along. If you want to play SEC softball, you had better play on some high level tournament team. Lampton said she spent three summers playing in Florida. Dabbs spent the last two summers playing in Germantown, Tenn., and is currently playing with the Birmingham Thunderbolts with tournaments in Tennessee, Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago and as far as away as California.
As I understand it,Lunderman spent time in Oklahoma and California playing I remember Leake Academy coach Doug Jones telling me that the college coaches really didn’t care if a kid is playing on their high school team or not. She said one of her teammates at Ole Miss never played high school softball, but chose to only play on tournament teams.
This really saddens me. I understand that college coaches want to see how the top-level players perform against other top-level players. But what does that do for high school sports? Thankfully, there are enough kids like Dabbs and Lampton that their high schools meant enough to them to still play. I personally wouldn’t want a player who didn’t have enough pride to play for their school and try to help them win a state championship. But that’s just me and I’m old fashioned that way.
Lampton said she would tell anyone who thinks they want to play SEC ball that they need to get out of Mississippi and play.
“You can only get as good as who you play with,” Lampton said. “Girls in Mississippi seem to stay local. And as far as college coaches are concerned, local doesn’t get you anywhere. They don’t talk to high school coaches, they talk to the tournament coaches. High school just doesn’t matter to them. It’s a business, that’s for sure.”
Lampton said she found out that lesson the hard way. I hate that she’s putting her glove and bat down. But when she’s 40 with her own kids, she can tell them how she started in the SEC, beat the No. 1 team in the country and won the SEC Tournament. Not a bad bedtime story if you ask me.
Robbie Robertson is sports editor for The Newton County Appeal.
