When Allen Kent first arrived at Copiah-Lincoln Community College as head softball coach, he got to work immediately. He had to find out just where the talent was in the school&8217;s district and how to get them to play for the Lady Wolves.

But the problem he found in Adams County was unique.

There was no fast-pitch softball.

For junior colleges, coaches can protect a certain number of players from the school&8217;s district &8212; Co-Lin&8217;s district includes Adams, Jefferson and Franklin counties, among others &8212; from any other junior college in Mississippi.

So Kent made the contacts in Natchez and asked the question: Why is there no fast-pitch softball in an area where so many athletes can excel at it?

Four years later, there&8217;s momentum. Cathedral and Natchez High offer fast-pitch programs, Trinity Episcopal fielded a junior high team last fall and Adams Christian may do the same this fall.

&8220;I&8217;m glad to see we&8217;re moving in the right direction,&8221; Kent said. &8220;You guys have a lot of good athletes that I know could benefit us and have a chance at getting scholarship money. But they&8217;re not being taught at a young age, and they really don&8217;t have a program in the past to enable them to develop those skills. We don&8217;t have the time, effort or manpower to bring somebody in and teach them how to hit.&8221;

The issue now &8212; as Natchez High and Cathedral near the end of their fast-pitch seasons &8212; is whether or not the sport stays. It&8217;s common for girls growing up in Natchez to play in the slow-pitch league in the summer and on their high school slow-pitch team in either the fall or spring.

Natchez High and Cathedral have both struggled this season. Cathedral is in its second season of fielding a team and first to play a division schedule, while Natchez High is in its fourth year with a fourth head coach.

Both teams often match up against teams with players that have the fast-pitch background and grew up playing the sport. The result has often been one-sided &8212; like Vidalia&8217;s 22-0 win over Cathedral two weeks ago.

&8220;The potential is there,&8221; said Rut Horne, who coaches fast-pitch softball in Ferriday. &8220;Natchez has good athletes. They have kids that can run and throw, and other skills of hitting and pitching will come with time. They don&8217;t have the opportunity. They just need a little touch of it, and some of the kids will get inspired.&8221;

If the Natchez-Adams Girls&8217; Softball League would convert to fast-pitch, Horne and others say, it could serve as a feeder program to the high schools. But what he and others have learned in recent years is the transition process is a slow one &8212; if there is one at all.

Steady with a number of 300-plus girls each summer, the Natchez summer league isn&8217;t planning to do that any time soon.

&8220;I don&8217;t know &8212; they may eventually do that,&8221; league president Belinda Brashier said. &8220;Most people wouldn&8217;t feel like I feel, but when you go to fast pitch, you&8217;re going to lose some of your children. You&8217;ll have some that probably can&8217;t do it. It&8217;s a recreational league.&8221;

Spring of struggles

Horne has spent years spreading the word of fast-pitch softball. He is head coach at Huntington and has coached the Ferriday Gators in previous summers, including a 2002 team that lost in the championship of the Dixie Debs World Series.

His biggest pride, however, is working with pitchers in the hopes of landing them a college scholarship. A number have earned them in the past, and coaches are calling him now if there are others who could follow suit.

That&8217;s why Horne can&8217;t figure out why girls in Natchez can&8217;t have that same opportunity.

&8220;They&8217;re going to still play slow-pitch in Natchez, and they&8217;re not doing the girls any favor by continuing it,&8221; Horne said. &8220;I&8217;ve had coaches call about girls playing in our summer league, and they&8217;ve offered three of them scholarships. It&8217;s a chance to play at the next level. All we can do is give them a chance.&8221;

In order to be successful at fast-pitch, you&8217;ve got start early. Since neither Cathedral or Natchez High have players who have that background, it&8217;s made their seasons difficult. Even when the two teams played each other, the result was nothing typical of fast-pitch softball.

Cathedral won the first meeting 18-15. In the second game Monday, Cathedral won 15-5 thanks to 14 walks.

&8220;What we need here is if schools are going to stay (with it), young kids need to start now,&8221; CHS head coach Gary Blackwell said. &8220;We run up against eighth- and ninth-grade pitchers who are throwing just as hard as 11th- and 12th-graders. None of these girls have played before.&8221;

Slow-pitch supporters, however, argue that slow-pitch players have landed scholarships in the past. Former Adams Christian standout April Boyd is in her second season at East Central Community College and is one of the team&8217;s leading hitters.

Kent said it&8217;s been six years since Co-Lin has signed a slow-pitch girl. Former Adams Christian standout Holli Hankins earned second team All-American status in 2003 &8212; only after she was nearly cut the previous fall.

&8220;They don&8217;t come along like her very often,&8221; Kent said. &8220;They need to be concentrating on summer fast pitch and not summer slow pitch. Slow pitch is a dying breed.&8221;

Develop a pitcher

When Blackwell agreed to help coach the first fast-pitch team at Cathedral, he was as green as the team&8217;s uniforms. Now he&8217;s head coach this spring and has more of an idea of what it takes to win in this game.

Good pitching.

And a good catcher helps a ton, but like baseball, there&8217;s not much a team can do if it can&8217;t send out a pitcher to throw strikes consistently.

&8220;You&8217;ve got to have a good catcher as much as a good pitcher,&8221; Blackwell said. &8220;Especially when you&8217;re starting. You&8217;re going to throw a lot on the ground. You&8217;ve got to have a good catcher to block them.&8221;

Brandi McGraw has improved this spring pitching, Blackwell said. Over at Natchez High, the Lady Bulldogs have struggled with that this spring.

Head coach Michelle English, a Natchez native who has coached fast-pitch in Alabama, Florida and California, is taking baby steps with her pitchers &8212; it&8217;s location only right now.

&8220;You have to have pitching,&8221; English said. &8220;They&8217;ve got to be dedicated. This is something people don&8217;t understand about fast pitch. You can&8217;t expect to pitch and hit in January, drop a ball in May and come back in January.&8221;

A passing fad?

Natchez has tried before to get fast-pitch softball started, Brashier said, but the interest wans&8217;t there at the time. And for as long as she&8217;s been around slow pitch and seen how much the girls enjoy it, she doesn&8217;t see it going away in favor of fast pitch.

Not here, at least.

&8220;I think somewhere down the road &8212; I may not live to see it &8212; they may go back to slow pitch,&8221; Brashier said. &8220;Sometimes if you have a real good pitcher and a real good catcher, it gets real boring to them. I enjoy watching slow pitch more. There&8217;s more defense, but I&8217;m kind of out-voted there.&8221;

But slow-pitch softball may be on its way out in the MPSA. Adams Christian headmaster John R. Gray said he&8217;s had only one girl inquire about starting a fast-pitch program, but the school may go to that and drop slow pitch if the MPSA drops slow pitch entirely.

&8220;It&8217;s very hard to get a schedule now,&8221; Gray said of this year&8217;s slow-pitch team. &8220;To have a state tournament, you&8217;ve got to have all classes.&8221;

English said she&8217;s heard rumblings of similar action in the MHSAA, although slow-pitch softball is more popular with the public schools. If slow pitch is dropped in the high schools, it makes more sense to play it in the summer with the younger girls to serve as a feeder program.

That&8217;s if the interest is there. Several will play this summer in the Ferriday league for the first time.

&8220;They&8217;ve never played the game before, and it&8217;s just new to them,&8221; said Robert Ogden, an assistant with Cathedral and Huntington. &8220;If we&8217;re going to play fast-pitch softball in Natchez, Mississippi, we need to get in it now. It&8217;s going to be a long, long time before we get any kind of team that&8217;s going to be competitive. Nothing is going to help them unless they play.&8221;