MABEN — As a senior pitcher at Bogue Chitto High School, Meleah Brown ended her star-studded prep career with a 1-0 loss to East Webster in the Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 1A South State title game.
The run she gave up was unearned.
The winner of the South State series would be a favorite to win the overall title due to the depth and strength of South teams that season.
East Webster went on to win the first of four straight 1A titles.
“I thought, I”d never go back to that place (East Webster) and never wanted to hear about it,” Brown said.
Four years later, as coach of the Lady Wolverines, Brown led the team she swore she”d have nothing to do with to the Class 2A title game in her first season in charge.
“It”s still really, really weird,” she said.
Brown, who was an assistant for two seasons before landing the head role this year, guided East Webster to a 20-8 record and came within two games of claiming her first state title as a head coach.
For her accomplishments, Brown is the 2011 Commercial Dispatch Softball Coach of the Year.
“It”s amazing to be named Coach of the Year just because of the year we had,” Brown said. We struggled to start the season but had people step up at the right time.”
The irony of Brown guiding the Lady Wolverines to the brink of a title still makes former East Webster star Swayze Hollenhead laugh.
Hollenhead remembers Brown striking her out twice in the 2006 South State title series. Hollenhead was just a seventh-grader then, and when Brown started to offer hitting lessons to Hollenhead in 2009 the memory immediately came up.
“I don”t think coach Brown remembered me at all,” Hollenhead said.
Strangely, Brown”s services were initially shunned by then head coach Bill Brand. But after Hollenhead snapped out of her hitting slump by going 5-for-7 in East Webster”s next series, Brand invited Brown to help the team”s hitters and pitchers.
“It”s still kind of mind-boggling,” Hollenhead said. “Whoever thought we”d see her again, much less end up coaching us? After the year we beat them, we saw her at a basketball game here because her fiance was student-teaching here. She was kind of hesitant to speak to us, I
think, because she still felt like we took a state title from her.”
Brown spent the 2009 and ”10 seasons getting to know the personal she”d later inherit. The Lady Wolverines didn”t have a senior in ”09 and had just two, Hollenhead and shortstop Cayley McClellan, this season.
When she was named head coach, she became the third different coach in as many years. The transition, though, was seamless.
“It helped being there to see what needed to be changed to help the team,” Brown said. “We didn”t lose anybody, so that helped out a lot.
I had a good relationship with the girls.
“There wasn”t any drop in discipline and work ethic because most of the girls were already kind of scared of me because I”m so competitive. If they”re not doing their part, they know they”re gonna have to pay for it. I knew when to have fun with them and I knew when it was time to be serious.”
Brown had a future Division 1 signee in Hollenhead, who led the Lady Wolverines on the mound and at the plate. McClellan was a defensive wall at shortstop, and junior outfielders Montana Spencer and Michaela White took major steps as the season progressed.
Still, the Lady Wolverines were arguably the youngest team in the 2A playoffs with two eighth-graders, Mamie Hollenhead and Autumn Frost, as starting infielders.
“The key for us — we had talent — was getting back to the playoffs after missing it last year,” Brown said. “In 2009, the last year they won the state championship, they lost six starters off that team. It was unrealistic for these girls to win a state title last year — thatgoal was just too high for them. I think, coming in with the mindset
of just reaching the playoffs helped a lot of these younger girls just focus on winning each game.”
That modus operandi was put to the test when a tornado in late April destroyed the East Webster school and its athletics facilities.
Students were displaced and ended the semester at Wood Junior College.
The team responded like champions, sweeping Eupora in the first round of the playoffs and allowing just one run in the series. They lost the first game of the second-round series against Mantachie but rebounded to win the next two games.
The Lady Wolverines followed with a sweep of Hatley, which beat them twice during the regular season, to advance to Jackson.
“When the tornado happened, we were just starting to break through and play our best,” Brown said. “I was worried how the tornado would affect things. But it gave them some extra fire. We knew we needed to give our community something to be proud of.”
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