Tri-County Academy’s Lady Rebels were on a warpath this season.
With eight returning starters, most of which started on the past two state title teams, there was a very obvious goal.
They set out to try and win their third state title in as many years.
But that would be no easy task, even with a team as talented as the Lady Rebels had.
That level of consistency and domination is hard to replicate year after year.
Some of the greatest teams ever assembled in the professional sports world did not win three straight championships.
Though they had four straight NBA Finals appearances, the Miami Heat, led by LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, only managed two straight titles.
Neither Tom Brady nor Peyton Manning won three straight.
As good as David Ortiz, who just finished his legendary career, was, he too never won three straight titles.
The Tri-County Academy Lady Rebels, however, completed the incredible feat over the weekend when they finished their sweep of Canton Academy.
The two wins over their rivals marked the end of the journey for a number of TCA student-athletes.
Tri-County head softball coach Chris Jones, who has been the head coach for the three state title years and an assistant for two years prior, watched this group of seniors rise all the way up from seventh graders, achieving a number of dreams along the way.
“I’ve been with this group since they were in the seventh grade,” Jones said. “I would like to say there was a lot of talent there and that the kids worked hard, but you never know that they’ll win like we have. But we believed in each other, and they didn’t mind working hard. We’ve been a real good fit together.”
In recent years, the Lady Rebels have been fortunate to have youth. They have lost few players each season, leaving a good core group of players.
With only one senior from last year’s team gone from this year’s team, the expectations were pretty obvious.
“Obviously, the expectation of winning another state title was there,” Jones said. “You always want to expect to do good and set the goal high. We want to try and win it every year.”
For the first time in a while, Tri-County will be forced to replace that core when they lose seniors Sydney Davis, Jordan Lee, Mary Haydon Williams, Alysa Crigler, Abby Watkins and Leta McCullough.
Davis, as the pitcher of the past two state title teams, will be especially hard to replace, as she also added offense and intangibles.
“Sydney gave us some leadership,” Jones said. “She’s a dominating style pitcher. Not only that, but she also swings the bat really well. She helped on both sides of the ball. We had a good defense backing her up. We had a lot of girls help out behind her.”
Still, Davis and the rest of the seniors have to be replaced, but that doesn’t mean Jones will be caught off guard by the departure of talent.
He has already been working on the problem.
“It’s always going to be tough when you have to replace a pitcher like Sydney and five other seniors that have contributed so much on both sides of the ball for several years now, but I’ve been looking at this for a year or two, so I’ve been using younger kids over the course of the last year or two,” Jones said. “I’m trying to make the transition from one group of seniors to the next be not as big of a deal. We’ve got a lot of good young talent behind them that we have been able to get in a lot of really good ball games. They’ve been in some big pressure situations.”
With three state titles in three seasons, one would think that the expectations are still high in Flora.
Jones, however, does not want to put any more pressure on his girls than they already feel.
He wants to take things slowly, not overlooking any team at any time.
“I didn’t harp at the beginning of this year or last year on championships,” Jones said. “I harp on one pitch at a time and one inning at a time. That’s how we’ve done our thing all year long. These kids have enough pressure on them as it is to compete and do good in a program that’s getting up there now. We just expect them to go out and compete every pitch and every inning.”
The proverbial dust is now settles, and people will move on in different directions.
But before they move on and disperse out into life, they had one last thing to do together.
“I’m pretty hard on these girls,” Jones said. “I believe in a strong work ethic. We worked them really, really hard, and they never backed down from a challenge. The lasting memory for me will be after we won our third title last Saturday, everybody cleared out and left, and they asked me if I would hit defense for them one more time. It gave me a lot of pride in what I have done with them and what they have done with me.”
