With three growing daughters and a desire to spend more time with them in the spring, Jeremy Wilkins decided 2022 would be his last year coaching softball at Enterprise.

He finished his tenure with a strong season, helping guide the Lady Bulldogs to a berth in the MHSAA Class 3A state championship round. Enterprise was swept by Booneville in the best-of-three title series, finishing as 3A runners up and South State champions.

Because of his strong final season, Wilkins was named the 2022 Premier Preps Coach of the Year.

“I thought going into the year we had a good chance to go deep into the playoffs,” Wilkins said. “I didn’t know if we’d quite make it all the way to state, but we did set that as a goal. We had only graduated two seniors from last year’s team and returned just about everyone, and we got beat by Lake last year, who won state in 2A.”

After MHSAA realignment, Enterprise moved up from Class 2A to Class 3A and was put in Region 5-3A, the same division as Southeast Lauderdale, Union, Clarkdale, Forest and Morton. The Lady Bulldogs went 9-1 in their division and even defeated Southeast Lauderdale against in the South State round to punch their tickets to the title series, but it was a non-divisional game against Lake on April 19 that Wilkins said was the turning point.

“It ended up going 10 innings,” Wilkins said of Enterprise’s 8-7 win against the team that put the Lady Bulldogs out of the playoffs in 2021. “It showed we could go out and compete with the defending 2A state champions. It was a back-and-forth game all the way through those extra innings, and it showed the girls we could battle back and beat some really good teams. We were able to compete and stay in the game and walk away with a win.”

Aside from how far they got in the postseason, Wilkins said the thing for which he’s most proud about this year’s team was their work ethic and coachability. 

“Whatever we asked them to do, they went out there and got after it,” Wilkins said. “There was no teeth-pulling or anything like that. I think they saw we had an opportunity to be really good, too.”

Wilkins coached as an assistant under previous head softball coach Davey Dewitt before taking the reins the last three years, but starting in the 2022-23 school year, his coaching duties at Enterprise will be limited to football as an assistant.

“I’ve enjoyed coaching the spring sports, both baseball and softball and really enjoyed helping Coach Dewitt and being head coach for three years,” Wilkins said. “For once, though, I’ll be able to take the spring off and be able to enjoy my kids, so I’m looking forward to that.”