Lady Eagles’ Yocum is Coach of the Year for the third time

Published 8:06 pm Saturday, June 3, 2017

: Porters Chapel Academy’s Amanda Yocum, left, and Hannah Embry, right, are the 2017 Vicksburg Post softball Coach and Player of the Year, respectively. The two helped PCA to a 24-13 record and to the MAIS Class AA state tournament this season. (Ernest Bowker/The Vicksburg Post)

When Amanda Yocum took over as Porters Chapel Academy’s softball coach in 2006, the program was coming off a third-place finish at the MAIS Class A tournament and building a strong pedigree.

The emphasis, there, is on “was.”

PCA barely had enough returning and new players to field a team in Yocum’s first season. Understandably, a number of lean years followed as the program went through more of a build than a rebuild.

“I played my first year with nine (players). I actually played a few games with eight,” Yocum said. “We suffered through three or four years where softball just wasn’t strong. We didn’t have a lot of girls who were playing.”

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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