The 2021 season couldn’t have gone much better for Andy Davis in his first year as head coach at Sumrall.
The Bobcats returned to the state championship, won 31 games, and secured another region title, which earned Davis the honor of Pine Belt Sports Baseball Coach of the Year.
While the results speak for themselves, the pressure of the job was somewhat of an early burden for Davis, who held the role of interim coach for roughly the first half of the season.
“If we had started off 0-9, I would have been really worried,” Davis said. “For a week or so, I guess at the beginning of the season when I was interim, that it went through my head to keep this job. I love Sumrall enough to where that I would expect them to replace me or go a different direction.”
On top of not having his job secured, Davis, who was previously an assistant coach for 14 seasons, also faced the tough job of following Sumrall’s legendary baseball coach Larry Knight after he retired last summer.
“(The expectations are high) and that’s the standard,” Davis said. “The players know that. The parents know that. When Coach Knight left, the assistant coaches were still here, and we went about our business. I didn’t change much. It’s nice to be at a place that expects to win.
“Nobody likes to be compared to anyone, but to be honest with you if you compared me to Coach Knight, then that’s awesome for everything he has done. I wanted to make him proud, and I wanted to make the older people of our community proud to show that I’ve got this and I can do this. I didn’t want to let the players down. That was the big thing. They come in and play and expect to win. I give them the credit.”
However, Davis was able to easily forget about those concerns as his team posted a 21-2 record to finish the regular season, which obviously made it easy to elevate him to full-time head coach.
“I am very fortunate that we had a team like we did that helped take the (interim) tag off,” Davis said. “I honestly didn’t think it would be during the year. I thought it would be after the season.
“I’m glad they took a chance on me. I was able to sleep a little better at night, and my family was too. There was no more looking behind.”
According to Davis, there were two critical keys to the Bobcats’ success this season. The first, which many fans expected, was the pitching staff, as it held a 1.33 earned run average, which, according to MaxPreps, ranked third in the Mississippi. Sumrall’s pitching staff also notably threw 10 shutouts this season.
“I knew coming into the season that if we scored five or six runs a game that we were going to win a lot of games,” Davis said. “That was just by knowing how good our pitching staff was. The thing is, the guys who hardly pitched for us would maybe be another school’s No. 1 pitcher, but definitely No. 2 or No. 3 pitchers. I had five or six aces that were at my disposal every game.”
The other key for Sumrall was the Bobcats’ baserunning that racked up 148 stolen bases, which ranked No. 9 in the state.
“We knew we were going to be good on the mound,” Davis. “We knew we were going to be good defensively, and that’s year in and year out. We had more team speed this year than we have ever had since I’ve been here at Sumrall. We shattered the school record of stolen bases by 40-something. That’s a testament to those guys. It takes a lot more than to just be fast to steal bases. They understood what we wanted to do and our approach to baserunning. Us stealing as many bases as we did kind of surprised me.”
As eye-popping as those numbers were, Sumrall’s hitting also put up big stat lines. The Bobcats’ 243 RBIs and their 290 runs scored (which averages eight runs per game) were ranked No. 4 and No. 6 in the state, respectively.
Looking ahead, the Bobcats bring back a strong portion of their state-runner-up team. Sumrall loses three players from its lineup and brings back two of their starting pitchers. However, for Davis, it’s still sinking in that he gets to lead the prestigious program.
“If you would’ve told me this time last year that I would be sitting here today as the South State champion and as the head coach of one of the best programs of the state, well, I still wake up at times pinching myself to see if really is true,” Davis said.
