Orange Beach High School’s softball program has built a habit out of finishing games in dramatic fashion, and its second state championship run ended no differently than its first.
The Makos claimed their second consecutive Alabama High School Athletic Association Class 2A state championship over the weekend, edging Mars Hill Bible 2-1 in a game that stayed tied until the final inning at Oxford’s Choccolocco Park. For the second year in a row, Orange Beach delivered the winning run in walk-off fashion, sending a program that has existed for only two seasons into rare company among the state’s smallest classifications.
With the score knotted at 1-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh, leadoff hitter Falyn Beebe singled to put the potential winning run on base. Georgia McDonald followed with a bunt intended simply to advance Beebe to second, but Beebe read the play, kept running past second and slid headfirst into third ahead of the throw, putting herself in scoring position with less than two outs.
That set the stage for Daigle Wilson, who stepped into the batter’s box knowing exactly what was needed.
Wilson lined a single into the outfield, scoring Beebe from third and setting off a celebration on the field as Orange Beach secured its second straight title. Head coach Shane Alexander, stationed in the third-base coaching box, said his reaction mirrored the one from a year earlier — hands in the air and a sprint toward the dugout to celebrate with his players.
The finish echoed the program’s first championship, won a year earlier at the same Oxford ballpark. In that game, Orange Beach trailed 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh before a home run in the final at-bat delivered a 3-2 win over a veteran Class 2A program, capping the debut season for a roster that had entered the tournament with little pressure or expectation.
This year’s team carried a very different profile. After winning it all as an unproven newcomer the year before, Orange Beach returned to the tournament as the top-ranked Class 2A team in the state, a target rather than a surprise. Alexander said that shift in expectations made the second title feel harder to earn than the first, even though the Makos again found a way to close out the deciding game in their final at-bat.
Getting back to the championship game required the Makos to work through a state tournament bracket that included wins over other regional contenders before the matchup with Mars Hill Bible, which had fought through its own bracket to reach the title game and nearly forced extra innings before Orange Beach’s final rally.
Alexander praised the base-running instincts that put his team in position to win, saying the decision to send Beebe to third on the bunt attempt was the turning point of the inning. Mars Hill Bible called a timeout to regroup, and Alexander said his coaching staff considered calling for a suicide squeeze before deciding to let Wilson swing away and try to drive the run in herself.
Orange Beach will graduate only two seniors from this year’s championship roster, second baseman Madison Cogswell and center fielder Krystin Kennell, leaving much of the core group intact heading into next season. The Makos won’t have a chance to defend the Class 2A title specifically, however, as the school has been reclassified to compete in Class 4A going forward. Coaches and players say the jump in classification shouldn’t be a major adjustment, since the team already scheduled most of its non-region games this season against opponents from Class 5A through Class 7A.
Alexander, who coached previously at Hartselle High School, a large Class 6A program, said he recognized early on that this group of players had the ability to compete regardless of classification, and that building their confidence to match that talent was as much a part of the job as the softball instruction itself.
With back-to-back state titles now secured in the program’s first two seasons of existence, Alexander said he doesn’t try to rank one championship above the other, since each carried its own challenges — the first defined by the freedom of being an unknown underdog, the second by the pressure of chasing a repeat as the team every opponent circled on its schedule.
Alexander also credited the surrounding community, including support from Orange Beach city leadership and school administrators, for helping build the environment that has allowed the young softball program to develop so quickly into a back-to-back state champion.