Tabitha Baggett knows the dark feeling of dread, the shock of discovery, the depths of despair and the triumph of the spirit, embodied by an entire community and a team that pulled together exactly as a strong family does in times of trouble.

In June of 2022, the veteran Leroy High softball coach felt something wasn’t right. Trips to the doctor yielded a couple of “it’s nothings” and the mother of two boys – now 2-year-old Kannon and 10-year-old Catcher – was told “it’s an inflamed milk duct.”

“I knew something was going on at the end of softball season,” Baggett said. “I think it got missed a little bit. It was not on purpose, it just happened. It was not just an inflamed milk duct. It was cancer.”

In June, she and her doctors worked out a treatment plan. Toward the end of July, chemotherapy started. Every 21 days. “Every bit of my hair fell out after the first treatment,” she said with a chuckle, one that has to come easier now that she has been receiving totally clean scans since November. “I’ve got curly hair and it’s growing into an interesting hairdo right now.”

Baggett has 453 career wins in 12 seasons – all at Leroy, and most with her husband, Kenneth, serving as a volunteer assistant. She will be leading the second-ranked Bears, champions of Class 1A Area 1 into Tuesday’s South Regional in Gulf Shores with a 29-16 record against Area 3 runner-up Red Level (16-11) at 11 a.m.

“We started dating in high school,” Baggett said of her unpaid assistant. “He’s been following me around with softball ever since.” The Mr. Coach Baggett, who works full-time with PowerSouth, tutors pitchers and slap-hitters for Leroy.

Baggett credited assistant Brittanee James and her players’ parents with taking on extra work while she wasn’t able to be at Leroy’s Baggett Field – named for the two coaches in March of 2020 just before the COVID-19 shutdown. “Brittanee took on a full load of coaching the junior varsity this year,” she said. “She also helps with the varsity when she can. She started here as an aide and she teaches P.E. at McIntosh, where they don’t have a softball team.

“I wasn’t really around during the fall time to do what I needed to do. We had parents working with their own kids making sure they got what they needed. Our players had to work a lot on their own and deal with some days that were not normal. They were in limbo because I wasn’t sure if I could coach them,” Baggett said.

Stage 4

Certainties were hard to come by for the team and for the Baggett family. “Stage 4 cancer, that’s not good,” the coach said. “It means that the cancer has spread, but at this point all my scans are clear. But you never know with cancer and what it’s going to do.

“There was a spread, that was the main thing for me. If I have a platform to put out there, it’s that you’re not too young to get cancer. I was diagnosed at 36. You can get it your 30s, in your 20s, whenever. I had to do chemo and that’s tough, but there are 3-year-olds doing that. If they do it and move on, so can I.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Baggett said with a catch in her voice, “I definitely had dark days and tough days. The whole time, I was thinking, ‘How can I coach? How much am I going to get to coach them?’ That, along with my kids, really helped get me through. Having that to look forward to – getting through for my kids and, when you coach them for six or seven years, they are yours, too – was extra motivation to help me go through the treatment.

“I treated it like everything else, like I expect my team to treat a game: Put your head down and go hard at what you’re doing. The same way that applies to a ballgame, it applies to life.”

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Baggett underwent chemotherapy in Mobile, but she also visited Houston’s famed MD Anderson Cancer Center. Calling her type of the disease a “unicorn of breast cancer,” she wanted to make sure her treatment approach covered all the bases. The disease had spread to her liver, but after her therapy, she said it’s not there any more.

“The first day we came out there and played a rivalry game (the second game of the season) against Jackson High School, I wasn’t sure. ‘Do I really want to be out there doing this? How am I going to be?’ It made me feel alive. I still do want to do this. I want to be here for these kids. When you’ve been playing or coaching ball your whole life, that is part of what you’re looking for and living for.”

Baggett said a great lesson she has taken from her hard times lately is the importance of relationships. Three mentors, all coaches from her playing days at Fruitdale High School became important in other ways during her illness. Brian Henry coached her and was her boss for a year when she started as his assistant at Leroy. Curtis Kirkland, another of her coaches, is now the principal at Millry. Lisa Connell, another coach, is now superintendent of Washington County schools.

“Those three, through all this, have helped me and I needed help. They supported me when I needed more time off through this than I had. They supported me though some dark times,” Baggett said. “It’s important to build relationships with people. Relationships that mean something. When something like this happens, you realize we all do mean something to each other. They know I’d do the same for them.”

This year’s Bears

This year’s team again won the Washington County tournament, continuing the Bears’ streak since 2007, four years before Baggett took over as head coach from Henry and three years before she became his assistant. The coach praised seniors and college signees Kayley Weaver, Campbell Newell and Abbey Waddill for their leadership this season.

“We set out with a pretty hard schedule for us,” Baggett said of the slate that included a 3-2 win over 6A Mountain Brook and one-run losses to 7A Fairhope and Mary Montgomery and 6A Spanish Fort (in extra innings). I knew we’d likely lose more games than we’re used to losing, but we’d see some good pitching. Some games, we’d look like a million bucks and then we’d come out a little flat the next game.

“Kayley Weaver, our first baseman, is our leader. She’s the spirit of the team. We go as she goes, and she keeps us up and on our toes. Our shortstop, Campbell Newell, carries a lot of the load, too. Abbey Waddill plays third base, but she’s a fine catcher, too.”

Weaver is headed to Bishop State Community College, Newell to the University of Mobile and Waddill will play at Coastal Alabama Community College in Monroeville.

Baggett, reflecting on her journey with cancer and her career in the town of around 900 about 60 miles north of Mobile and hard by the Tombigbee River, called the community “one of the most supportive places. It’s not just with sports, if you live here, everybody in town will root for you and pray for you. They’ll do anything they can do.

“Sports is the heartbeat of the town,” she said. “We’re just an itty-bitty place on the side of (U.S. Highway) 43. It’s no secret how we’ve been successful. We have great parents who support what you’re trying to do. They put their blood, sweat and tears into the program and the girls are willing to do the same.

“We have former players who come back and help. They will come back and pitch to us – we’ve had a couple do that for the regionals, and they are in their 20s doing things to help us prepare. Whenever the community and the school expect you to do well and be successful – our football team won 1A state this year – it matters to them, then it matters to the players. They take it to heart and want to please the community and school, too.”

The coach matters, too. When Baggett was able to return full-time, her players came to her with a request. Actually, it was sort of a demand.

“They told me they wanted to get pink uniforms, pink tops and pink-pinstriped pants,” she said of the work clothes they wanted in the color that signifies breast cancer awareness. “I tend to keep to myself, so I told them, ‘Y’all don’t have to do that for me.’ They were like, ‘No. We are.’ I just told them to just make them look good. They are pretty sweet uniforms.”

After the girls got with their parents to order the uniforms, the coach suggested that the team look further outward as well.

“I have a friend I went to high school with,” Baggett said. “I was in the middle of my treatment, and she finds out her 3-year-old has leukemia. So, we got some T-shirts to wear with our uniforms to honor my friend’s daughter.”

As if she needed a reminder of the battle she has fought against cancer, Baggett continues the routine of a clinic visit every 21 days, now to receive antibodies treatments instead of chemo.

Baggett said she has learned that a popular cliché is a definite fact. “Anything can happen to us at any time. You can have cancer or whatever it may be, but none of us are promised a single day. I don’t take anything for granted and I know it’s a cliché. I might live 40 years, but who knows?

“People really do care,” she said. “They really will have your back. In this small place, if they say, ‘Let me know what I can do to help,’ they really mean that. It’s been so special to me and my family.”