MOULTRIE — One of the most pleasant surprises of 2019 in Colquitt County athletics was the play of the Colquitt County softball team.

The Lady Packers of head coach Chance Pitts went 26-7, won the Region 1-7A championship and were one of the eight teams to advance to the state tournament in Columbus in the last week in October.

The team was unquestionably the best fast-pitch Colquitt County has produced and was the first to reach 20 victories.

Colquitt also had some strong teams when it played slow-pitch and finished third in the state and won 28 games in 2000 in the final year before the school moved to playing fast-pitch.

It was 35 years ago that Colquitt County first started playing softball and coaching the program for the first four of its 17 years of slow-pitch was Missie Brock.

In 1984, Brock was in her second year in Moultrie after moving here with husband Brent Brock, who was part of the first Colquitt County football staff led by head coach Jim Hughes.

She was an outstanding athlete herself, having been an all-region basketball player and a tennis player at Albany High and then a fine basketball player at Valdosta State.

She was also playing softball after moving to Moultrie and perhaps was not surprised when asked by Hughes, who was also the Colquitt County athletic director, if she would be interested in starting the school’s first softball team.

“Coach Hughes thought it was time for Moultrie to have a girls softball program,” Brock remembers.

And at age 24, she said yes.

“We started from scratch, but we never had trouble fielding a team,” she said. “There was a lot of enthusiasm.

She and assistant coach Michelle Fowler held tryouts and found a number of players who had been playing in the summer softball league in Moultrie.

The Packerettes, as the girls sports teams at Colquitt County were known then, got off to a slow start that first season, losing six of their first 10 games.

But then the team won five of its last six, including four in a row, heading into the Region 1-AAAA tournament.

The tournament would be a tall order with defending region champion Tift County going into it with a 16-0 record under head coach Darby Cottle.

The Packerettes reached the region championship game, but could not get by the Lady Devils, falling 10-3.

Still, Colquitt went 10-8 in its inaugural season and outscored its 18 opponents by a combined 70 runs.

The team featured just three seniors, including pitcher Tina Crosby, who threw every inning that season and took a .375 batting average into the tournament.

Deanna Clayton, another senior, hit a two-run home run to provide the winning runs in the region tournament victory over Lowndes.

The other senior was Billie Jo Cooper.

Among the other top players were third baseman Angie Causey, second baseman Lisa Stallings and outfielder Julia Poole.

The rest of the roster included Sandra Johnson, Lisa Miller, Cindy Paulk, Staci Howell, Kendra Lyles, Dana Lewis, Dawn Payne, Robi Dalton, Lara Baell, Vanessa Taylor, Susan Clark, Kathy Holder and Donna Turner.

Over the next three seasons, Brock coached the Colquitt County girls to 11-7, 15-5 and 13-7 records and was named the region’s Coach of the Year in 1987, her final season. She finished with a record of 49-27.

Missie Brock left Moultrie in 1992 when Brent left to become head football coach at Worth County.

She continued to teach and coach as she joined her husband as he took coaching jobs in Sylvester, Fitzgerald, Macon and Jefferson.

When Brent was an athletic director, he often asked his wife to take on coaching duties.

Missie went on to coach eight sports in a career that ended in her retirement from teaching three years ago.

In addition to her career teaching special education, she also volunteered for Special Olympics for more than 20 years.

Since 2006, she and Brent have lived in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where he has been on the football staff at Middle Tennessee State.

One member of that first Colquitt County slow-pitch softball team that continued to have a positive effect on the program was Angie Causey Davis.

After also playing on the first ABAC softball team, she got her degree from Valdosta State and returned to Colquitt County to teach, to become involved in Special Olympics and, for 10 years, to work as an assistant to Colquitt County head softball coach Keith Croft.

Croft posted a record of 176-88 while leading Colquitt’s the slow-pitch program and he gave much of the credit for the teams’ successes to Davis.

Davis, who died in 2014 at age 44 after a battle with cancer, and her husband Mark had two children who played for Colquitt County.

Daughter Ainsley was a four-time All-Region player for the fast-pitch Lady Packers. Son Ryan was an outstanding infielder for the Colquitt County baseball program.

Croft coached the first two Lady Packer fast-pitch teams before retiring with an overall record of 192-110.

Carman Phillips led the Lady Packers for eight seasons, posting a 119-116-2 record.

Jake Mobley had the team for three seasons, including 2013 when Colquitt went 19-12.

Pitts has coached the Colquitt County girls now for four seasons and has a 66-53 record.