Scott Tubbs knew his Holtville baseball team was going to be good in 2022, but he didn’t foresee his team having to overcome so many injuries during the process.
Holtville reached the AHSAA Class 5A quarterfinals in 2021, and the Bulldogs had high expectations entering the 2022 campaign as they returned eight of their nine position players and a plethora of pitchers.
But then Randy Davis, one of the top pitchers for Holtville, went down with an arm injury and couldn’t pitch at all during this season. Then Mikey Forney, who played catcher and outfield, also went down with an injury to his throwing arm that forced him to hunker down at first base and play designated hitter.
Then to top it all off, Todd Wilson, the team’s ace, dealt with tendonitis during the entire season.
But despite the injuries, Tubbs put together the best lineup he thought possible, and he led Holtville to the AHSAA Class 5A state championship series and the most wins in a single-season in school history. It was the first state championship appearance for the Bulldogs since 1983.
For that reason, Tubbs has been named the 2022 Elmore County Baseball Coach of the Year.
“This was a very fun year and very stressful, all at the same time,” Tubbs said. “We never got to play the guys the way we thought we would get to, but it felt like the kids really responded well to everything we tried to get them to do. But they fought and they had a chance there at the end. I was proud of what we were able to do. Obviously you want to win it, but at the end of the day, we just came up short. They did everything that they could humanly do to overcome those injuries.”
Holtville finished the season with a 35-7 overall record and state-runner up. Their 35 wins set a new single-season school record for wins. But it wasn’t always pretty during the year.
The Bulldogs started the season with a 13-1 record, with their only two loss coming to a very talented Stanhope Elmore team. Then the team fell into their only small slump of the season.
In four games from March 17 to March 24, the Bulldogs went 1-3 and were outscored 26-10 in the three losses. They were able to bounce back and win three in a row following, but then started area play with a bad loss.
At home against Marbury in the area opener, Holtville lost in extra innings, 3-1. In that game, however, Todd Wilson struck out a career-high 17 batters. It didn’t matter though, because Holtville only had four hits in the game.
Following that loss, Holtville didn’t lose another game until the state championship series. The Bulldogs ended the regular season on a nine-game win streak, then they swept Rehobeth, Demopolis, UMS-Wright and Headland in the playoffs.
“I think a lot of kids were stressed out because of some of the injuries,” Tubbs said of the rough stretch. “A lot of the kids were frustrated because we weren’t playing super well during that stretch. I think all of that was going on, and we just had to weather the storm a little bit. It finally clicked after that first Marbury game. We lost that one, and we used that as like ‘Guys, really? We have to be better than that.’ Two days later, we came out on fire and scored 20 runs and we just never looked back.”
The state championship series didn’t turn out the way the Bulldogs wanted, but they had a chance until the end. Russellville beat Holtville in the best-of-three series, 2-1, after a late inning offensive explosion in Game 3.
The state championship loss doesn’t define this Holtville squad and senior class. The Bulldogs won 62 games across the last two seasons and won six playoff series during that stretch.
They’ve won the area championship during both seasons with Tubbs as head coach.
“This program has always had talented kids,” Tubbs said. “We have some really good baseball players. It’s not a me thing. It’s a kid thing. We have good talent and we have good kids. We have enough of those good kids that hold each other accountable. This group worked as a whole instead of a bunch of individuals. And as a group, they’re really good.”
