STARKVILLE — The height of youth baseball season in Mississippi is drawing to a close with the Little League state championships coming up next week. Starkville Little League is gearing up for what it hopes will be a fifth straight state title with a trip to Waco, Texas, for the Southwest Regional tournament on Aug. 1 on the line.
“We expect to go to Waco,” Starkville coach Kain Elinburg told The Dispatch. “We expect to go and prove ourselves again at state, and the real goal is to make it past Waco. We just have to get there first.”
Last year the Starkville team, coached by Wes Gordon, went 1-2 in Waco before being eliminated by Oklahoma.
Since the expansion with the regional tournaments in 2001, Starkville has represented Mississippi eight times, including each of the last four years, at the Southwest Regional in Waco, Texas. Starkville is tied with Ocean Springs for the most state championships.
“It speaks volumes for the area that we’re in. It’s a baseball town and we just keep producing good players.”
Mississippi’s lone Little League World Series appearance came in 1977 with Hattiesburg’s Hub City Little League team making it to Williamsport.
Since 2001 only teams from Texas or Louisiana have made it out of Waco to Williamsport. The 2021 Starkville team that started the current streak saw its tournament run cut short after a Covid outbreak caused them to forfeit.
This year Starkville again has near total changeover on the roster, but the team is still expecting to live up to the standard of past teams.
“There’s only one player on our team returning from last year, but we always tell the kids don’t get too high and don’t get too low,” Elinburg said. “Stay in the middle and stay focused. Outside of that it’s up to them to perform, and they’re all capable of doing it but you have to keep the mentality.”
Starkville is one of three teams challenging for the right to represent Mississippi and will face off against Hattiesburg at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 15.
Although no Starkville team has made it to Williamsport before, the past success of this current group has them feeling confident. Many of the players were on the Starkville 12U team that won their region and advanced to play in the Dizzy Dean World Series earlier this summer. The group knows what it’s like to play in high stakes games and they’re feeling confident heading to Hattiesburg.
“We know Clinton is always good historically, but we’re not going to sleep on anybody,” Elinburg said. “We assume everyone is great until we beat them. It’s just us, Hattiesburg and Clinton this year. They know what shoes they have to fill, it’s definitely in the back of their head and it’s a big thing to represent Starkville and the state of Mississippi.”
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