Jonathan Nix, softball coach for the Ragland Lady Purple Devils, has coached the ladies to post-season tournament play.

As a softball coach, Jonathan Nix hasn’t had much to complain about the past two years.  

In his second season with Ragland’s Lady Purple Devils, his team has won one state championship and is a favorite to claim this year’s Class 1A title.  The year before wasn’t bad either, when he guided Ashville’s Lady Bulldogs to a regional post-season appearance.

“I owe it all to the girls,” he said three days before returning to Montgomery for Ragland’s opening round state playoff game against Wadley at 9 a.m. Friday.  “They’re fun to be around and fun to coach.”

While brushing aside his role, Nix spoke about the Lady Devils’ hopes of repeating as state champs, how the community has supported them, and how this year’s team differs from last season’s.

Are the girls excited about the opportunity to reclaim the state title? “Oh, yeah.  Definitely.  That was the goal from day one, to get to Montgomery.”

Has getting there been tougher this year?  “It has.  Lynn (last year’s Class 1A state runner-up and the top-ranked team before being eliminated in the region tournament last Friday) got moved into the Birmingham region this year, Addison dropped from 2A down to 1A, and South Lamar and Parrish were there, so you had the top four ranked teams in the region tournament at Birmingham.”  Ragland scored 39 runs in four games and pounded South Lamar, 16-1, in the region finals.

Choosing the region MVP:  The award went to catcher Emily Church, but Nix said he’d have had trouble narrowing it down to one player.  “Emily hit a three-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the seventh against South Lamar. We had two outs with runners on first and second. The first pitch was a home run, but it went foul by a few yards. Second pitch, dead-center home run.  Then against Parrish, Kailey Echols had a two-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the eighth with two outs and a full count. The home run went over the temp fence, the real fence, and hit a car in the parking lot. Bomb!  Sommar Wright had probably the best batting average of the whole tournament, and Madison Oliver was 3-4 with two home runs in the finals.  Different girls stepped up for us in different games.  I’m very proud of all of them.”

Ragland’s record:  24-6. “Thirteen of the teams on our schedule went to region somewhere, and five advanced to Montgomery.  We try to beef the schedule up to put these girls in situations they’ll face later at state, and it’s paid off for us.”

Avoiding complacency: “This year’s team is striving for perfection, which is good.  It would be easy to say, ‘we’re state champs, we’re coming back, we’re fine, we don’t have to work hard.’  But we’re constantly asking ourselves, ‘what can I do to get better fundamentally?’  Softball is all about ‘can you catch, can you throw, and can you hit?’  The team that does that the best wins, and we practice fundamentals until they get tired of hearing about it.”

Coming into their own:  “It took us a while to realize that we’re not last year’s team. We lost some games early on when we didn’t realize it. Last year, the girls didn’t realize how good they were. They snuck up on people. We couldn’t sneak up on anybody this year. Our opponents were ready to give us their best game, but the girls have been living up to being a target. We’ve learned that we have to play our best and bring it every game. This year’s team has had to work harder, and I think we’re better because of that.”

Painting the town purple: “Everybody is proud of the girls and how hard they’ve worked. This town loves its sports, and everybody is excited about going back down to Montgomery. There’s no telling how many hotels will be full of Ragland people this weekend.”