So this is it. This is the end of high school baseball for Timmy Foster. No more tape-measure shots leaving Papa New Field, no more screaming doubles off the outfield wall and no more curveballs that left batters wondering what day of the week it was.

It&8217;s all been too fast.

Didn&8217;t it seem like just last year he was the national Punt, Pass & Kick champion? Or how he teamed up with his friends in Dixie Youth all those years and went to the World Series in some small town not many people have heard of?

His life has been well-documented. He&8217;s one of a select few where if you flip the back pages of The Natchez Democrat fast enough, you can watch him grow up. The picture you see above isn&8217;t too much different from the one in that team picture following that 11-12 state championship back in 2000.

Now it&8217;s over. Foster finished his prep career by collecting a second straight All-Metro Player of the Year award before heading to Southern Miss this fall to continue his career.

&8220;I think Timmy has proven himself since he was 13 years old,&8221; said Huntington head coach Mitch Ashmore, named All-Metro Coach of the Year. &8220;I told him I would have loved to have coached him. He was a very level-headed kid, and he&8217;s got a good idea of what he wants to do. He&8217;s one of the best ball players to come through here.&8221;

You won&8217;t find many to disagree with that statement, and instead you&8217;ll find more coaches relieved that he&8217;s finally finished high school. Foster started putting pitches out of the park as a freshman in 2003, but it was his junior year where people began to notice the ping of the ball hitting his bat was considerably louder than everyone else&8217;s.

The ball, as a result, traveled way farther.

&8220;Once he gets in the weight room and concentrates on one sport, he&8217;s got bright things ahead of him,&8221; Adams head coach Ron Rushing said. &8220;He can&8217;t really get in the weight room because he plays everything. You always look at kids when they&8217;re 12 or 13. He just kept progressing. He had a strong arm back then, and he just kept growing.&8221;

He did it all at Adams Christian and was the best athlete in the school. But he dominated the most on the diamond to the point where everyone in the MPSA knew of Foster, his ability to drive a ball if he got up over the plate and that filthy curveball.

So they started throwing him outside.

It was tough at times. The pitchers with good control could hit that spot where it would get the corner if he watched it or go off the end of his bat. Those occasions, though, weren&8217;t often enough.

He helped the Rebels get to the state championship series a third straight year. His numbers were .510 batting average, 1.029 slugging percentage, 38 runs batted in, 22 doubles, 10 homers and only 15 strikeouts in 104 at-bats.

&8220;I got to where I was getting used to it,&8221; Foster said. &8220;And they&8217;d change it up on me. You&8217;ve got to sit and figure out where it&8217;s going to be. I hit it solid most of the time. Sometimes I&8217;d hit it off the cap. They don&8217;t want me to extend my arms on the pitch.&8221;

Foster improved at it during the playoff run this spring after struggling some in the postseason the year prior. During last year&8217;s state series, all he saw from Simpson Academy pitchers were something outside, and he struck out three times in the final two games while notching only one hit &8212; a single &8212; in eight at-bats.

This time he fared better. Foster credits some of it to summer league coach Joe Caruso last summer while playing with the Mississippi Stars. Caruso will join the staff at Meridian Community College.

&8220;He helped me out with my swing and got me to where I was rotating every time and doing the right things,&8221; Foster said. &8220;He helped me a lot last summer and got me where I needed to be. He&8217;s a good hitting coach. He&8217;s taught hitting lessons in Mississippi every year.&8221;

But he can&8217;t talk about individual accomplishments without expressing disappointment in the end result. He and the Rebels couldn&8217;t get over that hump in the state championship series this spring by getting swept by Simpson Academy and falling at state for a third straight year.

The year prior the Rebels lost to Simpson in three. In 2004, they lost to Jackson Prep in two.

&8220;It was our goal, and we finished short of it,&8221; he said. &8220;It&8217;s going to be in my memory for a while. But the time I spent with my teammates, that&8217;ll be remembered for a while. I think we were closer this year than I&8217;ve ever been with a team.

&8220;I was pretty satisfied with what I did, but I wish I would have hit more home runs, but you can always come up with what you want to. You&8217;ve got to do what you&8217;ve got to do.&8221;

So this really is it. There&8217;s really no telling what lies ahead for Foster at Southern Miss, a solid program that&8217;s putting together a run of NCAA tournament appearances. It&8217;s also not the end for three of his teammates &8212; C.J. Wright, David Alton New and Cole Bradford &8212; teammates on some of those Dixie Youth teams growing up who will play at Co-Lin.

But know this much: he&8217;ll likely play one of the infield corner spots, quite possibly first base, with the Eagles. How quickly is the question.

&8220;Timmy is a competitor,&8221; Rushing said. &8220;When he gets over there, he&8217;s going to do what he&8217;s got to do to get that starting position. If I was a betting man, I&8217;d bet he gets a starting position.&8221;

Said Foster: &8220;It&8217;s going to be a lot of hard work. But I don&8217;t mind.&8221;