The new standard: Young team’s title run resets West Laurens softball’s high bar for success

There are championship seasons that you come into with most of the pieces already in place. Then there are some, like this year’s for the West Laurens Raiders, that require some serious climbing to get to the top. 

Their 2026 softball team wasn’t one many would have picked to win it all at the start of this year, with unproven freshmen stepping into at least three key starting roles, an overwhelmingly inexperienced pitching staff and defensive flux at a few other spots on the infield where upperclassmen would be required to play positions they never, or at least seldom, had before. 

An offseason reset following the graduation of a huge and talented senior class forced the Raiders to do some building, break a lot of new ground, and tinker with some things on the fly once the season got going.  

But as they went deeper, and got better, they’d find the unexpected makings of their program’s second-ever fastpitch state title, which came to fruition Saturday as their storybook run concluded with a fifth win out of six games at the GHSA tournament. 

“From where we started to where we ended, it’s just a complete 180 turnaround,” said West Laurens head coach Mike Thompson. “The girls just kept getting better. I kept telling them all season, let’s just get better every day, ladies, let’s just improve every day. Let’s work on the things we’re not good at, and as individual players, you work on the things you’re not good at, and we’ll work on the things we’re not good at as a team, and they did. They just kept getting better. They kept grinding and they’d make mistakes, and me and Coach (Jody) Pollock would get on ’em, and they would just respond every time.” 

The Raiders had conquered the GHSA tournament’s double elimination bracket only once before, back in 2022, but pride themselves on carrying a yearly expectation of being in the mix with the state’s top contenders in Columbus. 

The past six West Laurens teams in a row, and plenty more going back through the years, had all made it there. This one, despite some obvious disadvantages, wasn’t about to be a first since 2019 to come up short. 

In the process of working to measure up to that high and unchanging standard, the 2026 Raiders may have actually raised the bar a little more. 

They’ll now go down among the school’s greatest squads in history, particularly in an offensive category with a lineup that, 1-through-9, had the power and clutch hitting ability to rival any group that had come through before. 

That’s what carried their fortunes through the entire tournament. 

West’s 57 hits on the week included 12 home runs, by five different players: Demmie Moss led the way with four. Madison Brown and Maggie Shea Lord hit three each and Paisley Powell and Ella Thompson added the remaining two. 

That continuation of a season-long offensive trend would help this team shatter a longstanding school record for homers in a year. 

“Forty-one was the final total, which is just incredible,” Thompson said. “The school record was 30, and that has stood since 2011, when I had that group of girls who could really swing it.” 

A decent number were to be expected from hitters like Brown and Moss, who had already shown some decent pop as returning starters. 

But a surprising amount came from others in Lord, Thompson, Powell and Audrie Edenfield who had not, at the varsity level anyway, shown a serious tendency to go deep with any regularity. 

That proved to be a huge bonus for a club that, not anticipating nearly as much juice outside the heart of the order, had spent a lot of practice time during the summer and early fall preparing to play a lot more A-B-C softball. 

That would serve them well in just as many big moments when they were able to move runners into scoring position with less than two outs, and put a ball in play to get them home. 

“When you can do that and get on base and bunt and run the bases a little bit, and then you hit the home run, you’re turning solo home runs into 2- and 3-run homers, which completely changes games,” Thompson said. “Solo home runs don’t beat you a lot of times, but a 3-run home run will get you.” 

This lineup also had no weak spots, with players in every hole who could do whatever was needed, and also change the game with a single swing. Every one of them stepped up at some point over the six-game stretch to do something important at the plate. 

“Every time a different girl stepped up to the plate, I had confidence she was going to make something happen, that she was going to get on base and get it to the next girl, then that one get on base and get it to the next girl,” Thompson said. “Everybody came through, and just really played great.” 

Coming a long way… 

Though the offensive pieces of the puzzle on the edges and corners proved easy to place, the ones out in the middle were much more troublesome to find and fit in the season’s early going. 

The Raiders’ defense, which struggled in an up-and-down month of August, ultimately got situated and comfortable by early September. 

The pitching staff, as much a work in progress at the start, did so as well with junior Peyton Crabb emerging from an early three-member rotation as the team’s go-to in the circle throughout the regular season. 

“We just kind of rode Peyton,” Thompson said. “She’s a really durable pitcher. She can go. She can pitch today and then come back again and pitch tomorrow. I asked her one time, at some point, can you go throw two games today? And she said, Coach, I can throw as many as you need me.” 

Moss, whose starts before Saturday were limited to a handful in that early feeling-out phase, also proved to be an ace up the sleeve who came on in the postseason to do some important work. 

The sophomore, after helping save a come-from-behind win to complete the second-round sweep of Adairsville, followed Crabb in the circle to pitch the final few innings of the tournament’s first four games, then made the start – with Crabb in the lineup as designated player, and waiting in the wings for some potential relief – in both Saturday’s rematches with North Hall. 

Both arms ended up being instrumental in how the team’s run shaped up. 

“I don’t want to discredit Peyton’s effort, and I told her yesterday, she didn’t get to throw in the last two games, but without her, we wouldn’t’ve been where we were,” Thompson said. “She logged most of the innings all year long and we were where we were because of her. 

“But Demmie really stepped up. I kept thinking she would run out of gas too at any point, and I said, I’m going to ride her until she runs out of gas, and then we’re going to go back to Peyton or Audrie, and see if they can get us some outs. But she just kept getting outs and kept getting outs. I kept telling Peyton to stay loose, we were probably going to need her. And she just kept getting outs.”

Moss, whose pitching and clutch hitting would earn her the tournament’s MVP honors, made perhaps the biggest improvement of any individual Raider over the course of the season as she turned it on to become a real game-changer both at the plate, on the hot corner and in the circle. 

“Demmie’s got a lot of potential. She’s a great player, and I’m not surprised by her performance,” Thompson said. “I’m just glad it finally showed up in the biggest moment. She played great, they all played really great.” 

Bouncing back… 

After a come-from-behind effort to beat Ridgeland in the opening round Wednesday, then a more straightforward victory over Cherokee Bluff to continue advancing in the winner’s bracket, the big weekend began with a devastating setback in Friday’s 13-5 loss to North Hall. 

West Laurens put together a late comeback to draw within four twice on a pair of Lord home runs, as well as RBIs by Chandler Malone and Powell that came in the fifth and sixth innings. 

But the Trojans, who also out-hit the Raiders 13-8, kept scoring to put their early lead well out of reach. 

The defeat – one that was big enough to knock your confidence down a peg or two – seemed to be just the gut check that was needed to get them refocused ahead of a daunting task of winning three-straight on Saturday. 

West would rattle those off with flying colors to earn some redemption, and become the tournament’s only team in any classification to force or win an “if” game. 

“It’s really remarkable what they were able to accomplish,” Thompson said. “It’s difficult to win on Saturday in Columbus, No. 1. But to win three games, on championship Saturday against the quality of teams that are always there, it’s just really remarkable. I’m just so proud of these girls. The seniors stepped up and played great, and led us.” 

The Raiders’ opposition in Saturday’s first elimination game would be perennial state tournament rival Heritage, of Ringgold, which had knocked them from the ranks of the unbeaten, or sent them home outright, in many a previous matchup. 

The Generals would out-hit them 9-6 in the game, but West Laurens was able to cash in an early opportunity with two on base to strike for three in one home run swing by Brown, and establish an early lead in the first inning. 

The Raiders held onto the last run of that advantage with two key outs to escape a bases-loaded situation in the top of the seventh, and win 4-3. 

West Laurens would lead the hitting in both the next two games, and blow the lid off of the last one after once again going up early and hanging on late for a 6-3 decision in the initial North Hall rematch. Two homers by Brown, and another by Moss, helped insure the lead against a comeback by the Trojans, who’d score a run each in the last three frames. 

They got runners to the corners with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, but a fly ball toward Malone produced the final out. 

The turning point of Saturday’s rubber match came after a two-run first to give North Hall an early edge, as Brown hit a two-run single to tie the game, and Moss followed with three-run blast to center to put the Raiders up 5-2. 

RBIs by Moss, Brown, Thompson, Malone, and Edenfield followed in a six-run third to make it 11-2 and send the game on a snowball’s course. 

Powell hit a solo shot in the sixth for a little insurance in the midst of a five-run push by North Hall from the fourth through the sixth, but this time it was West Laurens’ turn to wave while riding off into the sunset. 

The final score would be 12-7. 

“When we got in the lead, Demmie hit the big home run to put us up, and really changed the momentum of the game, and just kind of propelled us,” Thompson said. “We kept scoring more runs.”

The late lead of five, in contrast to a comparatively razor-thin margin of just one run that decided the Raiders’ clinching victory over Whitewater in ’22, made the ending and celebration a little different, and much less stressful for Thompson and his staff after an infield pop-up put the final out in the books. 

But this return trip to the top proved to be just as special as he and Pollock shared a celebratory hug outside the dugout before storming the field with their players.  

The trophy presentation ceremony and a three-hour ride back to Dexter, where plenty of the fans and family in attendance all week were once again waiting for their arrival at the school, offered plenty of time to soak all the emotions in. 

“It’s just always special when the community and the school comes out to support the girls,” Thompson said. 

The bus rolled up next to the Raiders’ dugout, on the back of which are some yellow softball-shaped cutouts with the years and rosters of all their teams through the years to win a region crown or advance to Columbus. 

Before too long, there will be another there that reads “AAAA State Champions,” that won’t just serve as a marker of this team’s memorable achievement. 

It’ll also be there as another sign coaches can point to during the next set of offseason workouts as a reminder of something they harped on so frequently this fall that it likely echoed between the bleachers on many afternoons: “The standard is the standard.” 

It didn’t budge one bit for this West Laurens team that, despite facing its share of challenges, had an uncommon determination to rise and meet that mark. 

“They took many butt-chewings throughout the year, but they responded and they got better and they improved, and just kept working at it,” Thompson said. “Ole Chandler Malone kept saying all year long, ‘Coach, everybody’s doubting us.’ And I kept saying, ‘Yes, everybody’s doubting us, but they don’t know what we know.'” 

Now, they do.