Charly Clanton had been dreaming of it since seventh grade.
For five years, the New Hope High School shortstop couldn’t wait for all the fireworks her senior season was going to bring: Senior night. Playoffs. A chance to play for a state championship for the final time.
And through the first 10 games of Clanton’s senior year with the Trojans, all those things looked like they were on the horizon. New Hope improved to 5-0, 6-0, 7-0. The team earned the No. 1 ranking in one MHSAA Class 5A poll.
“This was our season,” Clanton said.
It is theirs no longer.
On Wednesday, when the MHSAA announced the cancellation of all spring sports and activities due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Clanton and the Trojans had to come to terms with the fact that their “dream season” was over for good.
“It really was challenging to take in that I wasn’t gonna have my senior night or my last game,” said senior second baseman Katelyn Humphreys, who said she sincerely believes New Hope would have won this year’s Class 5A championship. “This team has put in a lot of work, and it’s just difficult to see that we aren’t gonna get to finish it.”
New Hope coach Casey Finch Halford said the abrupt end to a season in which “the stars were just aligned” was a stroke of bad luck her team is still trying to wrap its head around.
“The Lord has a sense of humor,” Finch Halford said. “He has a way of teaching us patience.”
She and the Trojans were patient, though. They waited more than a month after what would be their final game for a final decision from the MHSAA, knowing what it would be but holding out hope regardless for a postponement to the summer or another way their season could survive.
They didn’t get lucky.
“Ultimately, our hearts are still broken, but at least they did try to see if there was anything else they could do,” Finch Halford said.
When the decision came down Wednesday afternoon, the team’s group message began to blow up, as New Hope’s underclassmen told the team’s seniors — Clanton, Humphreys, Reagan Cook and Gabbi Manning — they loved and appreciated them. Parents of players on the close-knit squad sent their condolences.
“We were really hoping that it wouldn’t happen,” Cook said of Wednesday’s ruling, all but inevitable after Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday that public schools in the state would remain closed for the rest of the school year. “We had a really good shot this year. We were on top.”
New Hope finished its abbreviated 2020 season with an 8-2 record, winning its first six games before a trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama, for a major tournament on what proved to be the season’s final weekend. While the Trojans whipped Hunters Lane (Tennessee) 31-0 and beat New Site 11-1, they suffered their first two losses of the season to host Gulf Shores and to Walker Valley (Tennessee).
But even in that final game, a 3-0 shutout loss to Walker Valley, New Hope continued to show improvement. Late in the five-inning contest, as pitcher Natalie Pruitt settled into a groove against the Trojans, Finch Halford directed her on-deck hitter to watch Pruitt’s grip as she held the ball against her stomach rather than in her glove. Once it was clear whether the pitcher was about to throw a rise ball, a fastball or a curveball, New Hope’s on-deck hitter would tell the batter.
The Trojans began stringing together hits against Pruitt; they didn’t score, but Cook said they would have likely tied the contest had it lasted one more inning.
“We found so many great things even in that one game,” Finch Halford said. “Them learning things that fast and being able to help each other, it was just so many ‘aha’ moments that were just exciting.”
Cook and Humphreys both credited a lot of New Hope’s success to Finch Halford, a former coach at East Mississippi Community College and West Point High School in her first year at the helm for the Trojans.
“We have an amazing coach that’s gonna take this team far, time and time again,” Humphreys said.
She expressed her optimism for the Trojans’ future seasons as long as they have Finch in the dugout and talented players the coach can develop.
“We have legends on this team to come,” Humphreys said. “We have seventh, eighth graders that are putting the ball in play; they’re making the plays that I knew I couldn’t make being that age.”
The Trojans’ own legends — their four seniors — will be moving on. Clanton is committed to play softball at Northeast Mississippi Community College, but her fellow upperclassmen have seen the pandemic affect their ability to catch the eye of college recruiters. Humphreys hopes to play for EMCC, but the National Junior College Athletic Association has suspended in-person recruiting; Manning is hoping for a spot on Meridian Community College’s roster.
Cook has made plans to attend the Mississippi University for Women, where she wants to go into nursing; she’s still unsure whether her softball career ended with Wednesday’s ruling.
“I’m not sure softball is gonna be in my future,” she said. “I really want it to, but I’m still debating that.”
For now, she’ll have the memories of the final game she played. How her teammates began to cry as the reality of what could happen sunk in. How Finch took the team aside to tell them she loved them, that they’d overcome a lot, that they’d done well, that they’d learned new things.
“‘This is it,'” Clanton thought to herself.
Had she known for sure, though, Clanton said she would have taken her final game more seriously, focusing more and putting more heart into it.
Humphreys said she would have savored the final minutes, hanging out with her teammates one more time had she known what was to come.
And instead of rushing off the field that Saturday afternoon, already impatient for a road game against Columbus High School that coming Tuesday to open district play, she wishes the Trojans had lingered on that field in Alabama where they came together for the final time.
“We would have just stayed in the moment a little longer,” Humphreys said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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