Porter’s Chapel Academy will have a new leader of its softball program next season.

Chandler Upton, who has been PCA’s coach since 2019, announced she is leaving the school and taking a break from coaching. She will move to Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband Cameron who is taking a new job there.

Cameron Upton, a Vicksburg native who starred in baseball at Gallaudet University, will take a coaching position at the Arkansas School for the Deaf. Cameron is currently a coach at the Mississippi School for the Deaf in Jackson.

“He has a better opportunity to coach and teach at the Arkansas School for the Deaf. He’s trying to build a baseball program there,” Chandler Upton said. “I will eventually coach again. Right now I’m just taking a break.”

Chandler Upton played softball at Vicksburg High, and then East Mississippi Community College and Mississippi Valley State, before going into coaching. She was hired at PCA in 2019 and led the Lady Eagles to the MAIS Class 2A championship series.

She plans to stay at Porter’s Chapel through the end of the school year, and will move to Arkansas this summer.

“I wish I could have stayed here long enough to give the girls a field and a home place to play, but I know they are working on that,” Upton said. “I’m going to miss the girls very much. I’ve been around them so long that I’ve watched them grow into young women.”

Upton also was an assistant basketball coach for PCA. The school has not yet announced her successor.

“We would like to thank Coach Upton for her time and commitment to our athletic program as both our head softball coach and an assistant basketball coach,” PCA athletics director Blake Purvis said in a statement. “We appreciate her positive attitude and the character she displayed as a role model for our female athletes. We would like to wish Coach Upton and her husband, Cameron, the best of luck in their new endeavors, and pray for God’s guidance as they take this next step in their lives.”