Panthers finish season, fall to Alcovy
BY JUSTIN POOLE
After a hard season of having almost everything you can think of being thrown at them, the Diamond Panthers put on a show for the season closer.
The Jackson County Panthers took on Alcovy, Monday evening following the honoring of the seniors on the team.
The Alcovy Tigers took the early lead, scoring a run in the first. The Panthers rebounded, scoring a run an inning through the third inning. In the top of the fourth, Alcovy scored two additional runs to tie the score. By the seventh inning, Jackson County was down by three but was one hit away from tying the game.
Panthers’ head coach Tommy Fountain said, “I was proud of the way we came back in the bottom of the seventh and were just one hit away from tying it up. It’s almost humorous how many times this year we’ve been one hit away.”
Alcovy ended the regular season for the team. Their final record from the season overall is 6-20, which is an improvement over last year’s record. The Panthers won five region games this season. As Fountain says, the team continued fighting.
“I can say that these guys never quit and they had a better mentality about how the game has to be played,” said Fountain. “We were still very inconsistent at times, but the guys never laid down, they kept fighting.”
The seniors on the team faced a number of obstacles over their career as Panthers, including the opening of a rival school.
“To have three coaches in 4 years, have a brand new school open up, have all the turmoil that came with the opening of that new school, have some of your teammates decide to leave for that new school, and then you decide to stay put,” Fountain said. “That says a lot about the character of these seniors.”
While the seniors have made their marks on the field, the focus now turns to the returning players and what they have gained from those leaving. Fountain has said that the team needed to find out how to compete before they could ever learn to win. According to Fountain, the Panthers took that step this year.
With the nine returning players, nearly half were part-time starters, Jackson County has an opportunity to build on this year.
“I think the younger guys improved tremendously as the season went on,” said Fountain. “I think they’ll continue to build on the foundation of excellence that these seniors set. You can’t control adversity and you can’t always control the outcome on the scoreboard, but you can control the way you compete, the character you display and the effort you give. These guys bought into that this year, and we will see it pay big dividends down the road in our program and in their lives as they move on. This season was the first small step in a long process to get Jackson County Panther baseball to where it should be.”
