COVINGTON, Ga. — The 2021 prep baseball season was a sight for sore eyes.
The abrupt cancellation of the 2020 campaign gave coaches, players and fans alike a renewed appreciation for the game. That translated into a high quality of play on diamonds across the area this spring.
Eastside, Newton and Social Circle qualified for the playoffs in their respective classifications, while Alcovy made great strides and garnered experience for a team that will lose just three seniors.
As usual, our area was chock-full of elite baseball talent. From the coaching staffs down to the players, each dugout was overflowing with burgeoning stars ready to rewrite history. Every week of the season, one could walk into a ballpark and find a local team engaged in a high-stakes game that feature future collegiate — and, potentially, professional — ballplayers.
It is now our honor to proudly present the 2021 All-Covington News Baseball Team.
MVP — Kyle Shivers (Eastside)
The junior closed out the year batting .523 with a .569 on-base percentage and .817 slugging percentage. He tallied 57 hits — 26 of which were of the extra-base variety — and hit safely in 31 of the Eagles’ 32 games.
To top it all off, his 23 doubles pushed him into third place all-time in GHSA history for two-baggers in a single season. His 2021 campaign now trails only Lanier County’s Alex Lee (1989; 28 doubles) and Oconee County’s Adam Frazier (2010; 24 doubles) for the most single-season doubles ever recorded in the Peach State.
Asked about his historic year, Shivers, a humble leader who notoriously avoids the spotlight, couldn’t help but allow a sheepish grin to steal over his face.
“It went pretty good if I say so myself,” he said.
Eastside head coach Brandon Crumbley credited Shivers’ success to the second baseman’s baseball I.Q. and ability to slow the game down.
“It’s just the type of player he is,” Crumbley said. “He’s just a pure hitter.”
Shivers shifted up and down the top-half of the lineup throughout the year, but the results remained the same. Whether he was leading off an inning or coming to the plate with two outs, he understood what was expected of him. He constantly delivered quality at-bats for the club.
“The moment was never too big for him,” Crumbley said. “No matter if he was hitting leadoff, in the 2-hole or in the 3-hole, he knew what his approach was. He knew what he wanted to do at the plate. If he got a fastball, or even a breaking ball, and it was in the zone, he’d swing at it and he’d hit it.”
As Shivers’ batting average ballooned, opponents took notice. Scouting reports became progressively advanced and pitchers altered their approaches for handling him being in the batter’s box.
And yet, at-bat after at-bat, he continued to produce.
“He did a really good job of when teams started to figure out how to pitch him, he would hit the mistakes that they made,” Crumbley said. “That’s very hard for high school hitters to do. It just shows what type of hitter he is at the elite level.”
Newcomer of the Year — Reece Payne (Alcovy)
“You’re going to want to keep an eye out for freshman Reece Payne,” Hughes told me, “because, more than likely, he’s going to be your Newcomer of the Year.”
Hughes spoke it into existence. But it was Payne’s remarkable campaign that ultimately made his prediction come true.
The freshman outfielder batted at a .325 clip with a .495 on-base percentage for the Tigers this spring. He notched eight doubles, drew 20 walks, stole eight bases and scored 28 runs en route to being named First Team All-Region 3-AAAAAA.
What did Hughes see in Payne before the start of his varsity career that led him to believe he could produce a special year?
The ‘it’ factor.
“Sometimes you see a guy and how he handles himself, and you realize, ‘Hey, this kid’s got it,’” Hughes said. “He’s probably one of the hardest workers we have in the program, if not the hardest worker. He takes care of his business on the field. He takes care of his business in the weight room. He takes care of the little things.
“Just watching how he took care of the offseason work going in, watching how he handled practice, watching how he interacted with his teammates — there was just something there that kind of jumped out like, ‘OK, this kid’s about to do something. We just don’t know what it is yet.’”
Payne was penciled into the heart of the lineup from Day One. There were understandable growing pains as he adjusted to the speed and movement of varsity pitching, but the freshman rose to the challenge.
“Part of putting him up [in the lineup] early in there year was you want to see how he’s going to handle it,” Hughes said. “A lot of freshmen, and even sophomores, when they see that varsity arm on the mound for the first time, you can tell a lot just from how the look. How are they handling their emotions? How are they handling the mental aspect of it?”
As time went on, it became apparent Payne was adjusting just fine.
There were games when Payne faltered at the plate. Sometimes he’d struggle to see a certain pitcher. Other times he’d make hard contact and simply couldn’t avoid fielders’ gloves. But whether he went 0-for-3 or 3-for-4, his demeanor remained unchanged.
“A lot of 14- and 15-year-olds will have that, ‘Woe is me’ attitude or ‘I can’t handle this.’ But nah, he was just a bulldog for us,” Hughes said. “He went out there and kept competing.”
Pitcher of the Year — Cade Mitchell (Eastside)
Time and time again, senior southpaw Cade Mitchell brought electricity to the mound for the Eagles. And when he locked in — when all of his pitches were clicking and he was attacking batters downhill — he was among the most dominant arms in the state, if not the country.
Mitchell went 6-1 as a starter in 2021. He posted a 1.33 ERA, allowing just nine earned runs over 61 innings of work. He struggled at times to find the strike zone, resulting in 37 free passes, but countered this with a filthy arsenal that resulted in 126 strikeouts — an average of 14.5 strikeouts per seven innings.
“Some days I could kind of feel it wasn’t going to be there,” Mitchell admitted. “But some times, it was like I couldn’t hear anything. It was just silence.”
Head coach Brandon Crumbley pointed to the left-handers work ethic as the impetus for his breakout season.
“We talked a lot when he was younger about taking that next step of really taking control of his body and his arm. He bought into it, and then he saw the results, and then he really bought into it,” Crumbley said. “I think if he wouldn’t have had COVID shut down his junior season, he would’ve had two really, really good years back-to-back.
But I also think, on the flip side of that, from having the shutdown last year he realized how much harder he had to work to make sure he was prepared for this season. And, you know, just hat’s off to him. I couldn’t be prouder of where he’s come as a pitcher and as a player.”
Mitchell was a reliable workhorse all spring, but two of his outings stood out among the rest.
The first was a 16-strikeout gem in Eastside’s home opener against Jones County, during which he allowed just one hit and one walk over six scoreless innings. The second came in the final week of the regular season when Mitchell struck out 14 while allowing just one hit in a complete game shutout against No. 1 Loganville.
“Those two games, you look back and you go, ‘Man, he was electric those days,’” Crumbley said. “Like he said, there’s some days he didn’t have his best stuff, but even then he battled through it and he gave us a chance to win. On other days, he had really, really good stuff. It’s just a testament to his work ethic and his competitive fire that he has.”
Coach of the Year — Brandon Crumbley (Eastside)
Bar none.
Realignment forced Crumbley to navigate through one of the most brutal regions in the state in 8-AAAAA this spring. The Eagles not only brushed shoulders with state powers in three-time defending state champion Loganville, Greenbrier and Walnut Grove, but they traded blows and held their own.
Thanks to a two-game sweep of the top-ranked Red Devils in the final week of the regular season, the Eagles rolled in the Class AAAAA state playoffs as the No. 3 seed following a 21-8 campaign.
An early exit tempered the excitement, but looking back, it will be a season to remember for the Eagles for years to come.
“We played exceptionally well; a lot better than I thought we would’ve. It’s a testament to those guys buying in to my mantra of ‘Trust the Process.’” Crumbley said. “They understood that it was every single day that we had to come to the ballpark and play hard. You couldn’t take a day off.”
Through 32 games in the regular season and playoffs, the Eagles never dropped more than two contests in a row.
Eastside opened the year with a pair of one-run losses to Ola and Northside, but responded with a nine-game winning streak. After getting swept by Greenbrier in mid-March, the team rattled off six consecutive victories. And after taking a pair of blows at the hands of Walnut Grove over spring break, the team took out its aggression on Jackson County before sweeping a two-game series with the top-ranked team in the classification.
“It’s one of those things where if you buy in to what we’re trying to do, and realize that you have to show up every single day to play hard, then you have good results and you have a fun year,” Crumbley said.
All-Covington News First Team
C - Lucas Ballard (Newton)
INF - Mason Moore (Social Circle)
INF - Raquis Holmes (Alcovy)
INF - Sambo Button (Eastside)
OF - Ripken Maddox (Eastside)
OF - Zion Ross (Newton)
OF - Lamar Williams (Alcovy)
UTIL - Mitchell McCullough (Social Circle)
P - Holden Hall (Eastside)
P - Connor Coursey (Alcovy)
P - Wil Standard (Newton)
All-Covington News Second Team
C - Tanner Middlebrooks (Eastside)
INF - Logan Cross (Social Circle)
INF - Justin Brown (Newton)
INF - Connor Merritt (Alcovy)
OF - Jayden Bishop (Alcovy)
OF - Brayden Mitchell (Social Circle)
OF - Anthony Bynum (Newton)
UTIL - Ethan Booth (Eastside)
P - Ty Lemaster (Social Circle)
P - Kaleel King (Newton)
P - Hunter Parker (Alcovy)
All-Covington News Honorable Mentions
Hunter Denney (Eastside); Demetres Jackson(Newton); Jason Ball (Social Circle); Landon Davis (Social Circle); Mason Hill (Social Circle)
