Thompson continued Mooreville’s baseball legacy

For most schools, nine years without a state championship wouldn’t be that big of a deal. That’s not the case at Mooreville.

A year after losing in the Class 3A championship, Mooreville head coach Derek Thompson and his Troopers captured the Class 4A title this season. It’s the program’s first championship since 2017 and 10th overall. Thompson is the Daily Journal’s Baseball Coach of the Year.

“It was pretty special,” Thompson said. “It’s not about me or this team. The program, in general, from what they’ve been able to do throughout the years in baseball, I don’t know if it’s matched anywhere else in the state. I know that there are teams that got more state championships, but I don’t know if they’ve held that (consistency).”

A statistic that Thompson loves to use now is that Mooreville has now won a state title in every decade since the 1970s. Winning at Mooreville is generational.

“We’ve had players win state championships, and then their sons come through the program, and they win state championships,” Thompson said. “We’ve gotten to that point. But I’m just super proud to be a part of it and to help carry on that tradition here at Mooreville baseball.”

A lot has to go your way to get to Pearl, let alone make it back a second consecutive year. Mooreville finished the season 30-8. The Troopers rolled through the first two rounds of the playoffs and then survived back-to-back Game 3s to return to the championship series.

In the finals, whether it was putting up 15 runs in a Game 1 slugfest or Carson Hicks only giving up one earned run in seven innings in Game 2, Mooreville found a way to make the right plays at the right time. While last year’s ending hurt, having that experience helped this time around.

“Things kind of went our way,” Thompson said. “We were able to get a hit when we needed to in those North half semis and North half, pitched it really well. We’ve done those things in the past but was just able to get over the hump. I really think, obviously, for this group to be down there last year, was huge for them to experience that. Because you didn’t see that overwhelming feeling or look in their eyes when they stepped in there.”