Coming off of a state championship and losing 12 seniors, the pressure was on for this year’s baseball team. The Panthers worked through this by utilizing experience of the upperclassmen that played on the state championship as well as the fresh perspective of the underclassmen on the team.

“We got better as the year went on, we started hitting and some of the seniors started coming through,” head coach Brent Moseley said. “Hayden Gentry, Nick Madison, Ashton Davidson had a really good year.”

Despite the pressure, there is a lot to celebrate for the Panthers. This season they won the region for the 13th time, senior pitcher Kyle Rudolph set a record for most credited wins at 24, and Moseley is now 26th on the all-time wins list for high school baseball coaches in Georgia.

“There’s expectations for this baseball program and I feel that pressure, too,” Moseley said. “If you’re going to play here, the expectation is going to be high, and I make it that way for the players, too.”

The Panthers started the year going 0-3 in their first tournament, but kept pushing and eventually won the region championship as well as the first round of playoffs.

However, the pressure got to the Panthers in the second round of the playoffs where they lost 8-3 and 9-1 to the Cartersville Hurricanes.

Junior Brock Rein scored the only run in the second game and pitched the first inning, striking out one batter. Junior Parker Williams closed out the game pitching 4 innings with 7 strikeouts.

“I thought we got really close headed towards the end of the season,” Rudolph said. “I mean we started off slow. We went 0-3 in our first tournament,  but after that we started to get going and that really kicked us off so it was good.”

Starr’s Mill will lose 6 talented seniors who provided experience for Panther baseball. All of them were part of last year’s championship winning team.

“I liked how the relationships that the older guys have gained with the new, younger guys,” sophomore Tanner Ivaska said. “I gained a lot from watching the older guys, like the ones playing in college, and just seeing how they go about things and what makes them different.”

Looking at next year, the team will continue to build on what they have done these last few years and the experience that some of the players have. 

The Panthers ended their season with an overall record of 23-8 and a region record of 16-2.