Thousands mourn Leroy’s Tabitha Baggett as far more than a great softball coach

 

 

 

By JIMMY WIGFIELD

Tabitha Baggett taught her Leroy softball players more than how to successfully handle the nuances of the sport. Even as her life ebbed away on Thursday, it was obvious she had long ago lit an eternal flame that will be carried for generations by the thousands of people who love and admire her.

“She has always been the strongest person I know and has taught me to be the woman I am today,” former player Caroline Raley said in a Facebook post. “Seriously, I remember crying over getting out and she yelled at me and told me to suck it up. I think about that moment often when I need to suck it up.”

Raley and many others had to practice what Baggett so often preached when the venerable coach died at 3:45 p.m. surrounded by family at Baptist Hospital in Pensacola due to her collapsed immune system, which led to escalating blood and lung complications connected to the breast cancer she had fought for three years.

“It was a peaceful transition,” said her husband Kenneth, her high school sweetheart who served as her longtime assistant coach. “She knew where she stood with the Lord.”

Everyone else knew where they stood with her.

“We were sitting there this morning,” her husband said, “and everybody’s really tired and they were talking about what Caroline said. And I said, ‘You know what she’d tell you — ‘suck it up now, let’s go.’ She wouldn’t want you crying over her.”

Baggett, who turned 40 on May 19, built the Bears into a state softball power — going 486-176 from 2011 to 2024 — even while battling stage-4 breast cancer, which was diagnosed in the summer of 2022. She underwent chemotherapy and had recently been declared cancer free before surgery to remove a tumor that had spread to her brain and caused necrosis. Shortly afterward, Baggett developed lung problems that forced her to be connected to a ventilator for 23 days and a loss of blood platelets led to her death, her husband said.

“She fought with everything she had until she had nothing left to fight with,” he said. “She was actually deemed cancer free but she got a respiratory issue in her lungs and her body was just so tired from having the brain surgery. She actually had only one more treatment left and then she would have been done with her treatments. At the stage she was in, the cancer is almost always going to come back at some point. But she was cancer-free. Then she got something in her lungs and they attributed it to being autoimmune-deprived and her body just could not fight it off.”

Baggett underwent a craniotomy on April 11 to remove necrosis from the degenerating, non-cancerous tumor in her brain and seemed to be recovering.

“She came home and was getting around good,” her husband said, but on May 4 he awoke to her labored breathing and rushed her to the Washington County Hospital emergency room in Chatom before she was flown to Pensacola.

She spent her final 23 days heavily sedated and on a breathing machine while many of her former players visited her in the hospital before her husband decided to take her off the ventilator Thursday, 17 days after their 18^th wedding anniversary.

“She just wasn’t getting any better and her platelets were dropping, which leads to some other things,” he said. “She was just tired. She was essentially on life support. It wound up being a blood issue. They were having to give her so much blood. They gave her four units of blood (Wednesday night) and we’re like, well, this is our sign. I’ve been at peace with it. I know what all she’s been through.”

 

Thousands grieve a coach

who fought the good fight

 

Grief, memories and tributes poured forth on Facebook after Baggett’s death was announced Thursday. In a testament to her widespread impact, more than 11,000 readers viewed the Call News post in the first two hours, a number that swelled to 71,000 in the 24 hours afterward. Leroy’s population is 1,000.

Baggett took the Bears to the state tournament seven times and to the Class 1A state finals in her last two seasons while persevering through chemotherapy treatments before being forced to retire in 2024. Her players wore pink uniforms proclaiming “B Strong” for her last game, a 9-0 loss to Skyline.

“The job we do is really difficult to do well with no adversity,” said Leroy baseball coach Matt Braun, who assisted Baggett with softball during the 2024 playoffs. “She overcame an unimaginable amount of adversity with poise and grace. … That was really indicative of what kind of person she was. She was as tough a person as I ever met. To be in a situation where she was fighting for her life and had the two best seasons she ever had is amazing.”

Baggett — who personified toughness and balanced it with a desire to make those around her better — left the field that night with heavy reluctance.

“This has to be it,” Baggett said after a meeting with her sobbing players in left field following that game at Oxford’s Choccolocco Park. “I hate to walk away from it but at some point, we all have to do it and it’s time for me. I have things I have to focus on with my kids and in my personal life. I’ve been battling this for two years.”

Her husband recalled that after the final game, which concluded around 10 p.m., they drove back to Mobile and arrived at a hotel at 2:30 in the morning so she could get a treatment at 9 a.m.

Throughout the final season, Baggett wondered if she could simultaneously withstand the rigors of coaching and the debilitating effects of her cancer treatment but felt she had to set the right example.

Her husband said she endured the last season on guts.

“Last year was real hard,” he said. “She was mentally sharp from a coaching aspect. Her pitch-calling ability and her knowledge of the game was sharp. But physically, it was, ‘Can I go hit infield today? Can I get in a cage and show them things?’ That’s what got to lacking and that’s what really got her.”

He remembered a difficult game against Saraland last year just hours after she got a treatment.

“Those treatments, you’re acting up on steroids and drugs and I told (Spartans coach) Donna (Sunnycalb), ‘Bless her, Donna, don’t think nothing now, she’s kind of high right now,’” Kenneth Baggett said. “She would go to treatments and then come back and coach.”

Baggett knew she couldn’t do that in 2025 and interim football coach Chan Lowe took over the softball program and with the help of former Leroy star Brookelyn Keith got the Bears back in the state tournament.

“She didn’t want to get into the season and it would have wound up where the girls did not have anybody,” her husband said. “I am so thankful for Chan and Brookelyn, who played for us for six years. She’s in college now. She came back this year and called pitches and did a really good job.”

Keith is one of 41 All-State players Baggett coached. Twenty were first teamers and 25 of her players earned scholarships. All were molded in her image.

“She was a great coach and she was just as good of a player,” Kenneth Baggett recalled of her playing career at Fruitdale High School, where she graduated in 2003. “You needed a hit, she’d get it. You needed a catch, she’d make it.”

Baggett, who graduated from the University of South Alabama and taught English at Leroy, also prepared her players for the future.

“She’s got doctors, supervisors and mamas,” her husband said. “I’m so proud of her.”

 

Carrying on her legacy

 

Baggett is also survived by her sons Catcher, 12, and Kannon, 4.

“They’ve shared me long enough,” she said after her final game.

Watching her older son play travel baseball is one of the main reasons she retired.

“I told him earlier today — he’s handling it like a trooper — I said, ‘Buddy, when we play ball Monday night, next weekend, we play travel ball next weekend, she’s there to watch you,” his father said. “She won’t miss any more games.”

Catcher Baggett hit his first over-the-fence home run — a grand slam — on Monday night, three days before his mother’s death.

Washington County Public Schools Superintendent Curtis Kirkland said Baggett represented the best qualities of a teacher and a human being.

“Our hearts are heavy today as we mourn the loss of a great teacher, coach and an even better person,” he said. “Tabitha Baggett has been a cornerstone of our educational community, an inspiring educator, a dedicated coach and a loyal friend to so many. Her absence will be felt deeply in the halls of Leroy High School and in the hearts of everyone she touched. … Tabitha will be missed more than words can express but her legacy will continue through the lives she helped shape.”

Washington County Commissioner Jason Boothe, a classmate of Baggett’s in Fruitdale’s class of 2003, was devastated by the news of Baggett’s passing.

“It’s hard to fathom the loss on how one soul touched so many hearts in our communities,” Boothe said. “She was an amazing woman who inspired so many in the classroom and on the field. She will always have a special place in my heart and a smile I will never forget. We were classmates at Fruitdale High School and she was the one everyone looked to as she was the smartest in our class and a friend to everyone.  She proved that as the valedictorian of our class in 2003. She was very talented even at a young age on the softball field and the basketball court. That passion carried her to her future success on the field. She loved the game and loved being a teacher. She loved her family, especially her two boys. My thoughts and prayers go out to her family during this difficult time. She has touched so many lives during her career and those memories will keep her in our hearts forever.”

Funeral arrangements should be finalized and announced on Friday.