(EDITORS NOTE: Some of the following was first published in The Mississippi Press newspaper in May of 2014 in a story by veteran journalist Creg Stephenson. Those portions are reproduced with his permission.)

(This is the second of a three part series.)

By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASCAGOULA — Forty years later, and you can hear in his voice that it still bothers Johnny Olsen a bit.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most strange and bizarre endings to a prep baseball season ever in the state of Mississippi. And Olsen and his Pascagoula Panthers were right there in the thick of it.

There is still, to this day, no state champion listed in Class AA, which in 1984 was the largest classification in the state of Mississippi. And the reason why dates back to what happened on an otherwise non-descript Tuesday afternoon at Ingalls Field in Pascagoula.

“It was just really crazy. An unfortunate series of events that could have all been prevented,” Olsen told SouthMiss6 Sports Wednesday, in an exclusive interview. “In the end, the kids were the ones that got hurt the most. And high school sports is all about kids, that’s the most ridiculous part of it all.”

There was no official state champion for that year in 1984 by order of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

No State Tournament

With Hattiesburg now back in the tournament, the teams played on in the South State tourney. Pascagoula thumped Wingfield 8-3 in the first semifinal, then Hattiesburg eliminated the Falcons with a 5-1 victory in Friday’s late game.

That set up the championship round, with Hattiesburg needing to beat Pascagoula twice to win the South State title. No such luck for the Tigers, as Doug Crump pitched a no-hitter and the Panthers won 17-1 to claim the South State championship.

Elsewhere,Tupelo had stunned top-ranked Starkville, led by future major league pitcher Meredith “Mo” Sanford, in the North State tournament, setting up a double-elimination state tournament set to begin the following Tuesday (May 22) at Mississippi College’s Frierson Field in Clinton. The Pascagoula team got on the bus that morning expecting to face Starkville that afternoon, not knowing legal machinations would eventually ensure that they had already played their final game of the season.

Olsen was just 24 at the time, and in his first season as a head coach. He said his team was loaded with confidence when it boarded the bus for Clinton.

“We were playing so well,” Olsen said. “We’d had beaten everybody in the South State tournament and basically walked through the South State tournament. With our pitching and the way we swung the bats, I thought we had a better shot than anybody else. I was really still kind of green and didn’t know what to expect.”

The day before the state tournament was to begin, several Wingfield parents found a sympathetic judge of their own. A Hinds County judge issued a temporary restraining order, ruling that the state tournament be postponed until a hearing regarding the Hattiesburg injunction could be heard later in the month.

Should the Hattiesburg injunction be overturned, then Wingfield, not Hattiesburg, would be declared South runner-up and qualify for the state tournament. The MHSAA posted a paper sign on the locked gate at Frierson Field, notifying all comers of the court order that there be no baseball that day.

“Truthfully, back then, baseball just didn’t carry that much weight with the MHSAA,” Olsen said, this week. “This would have never happened in football.”

The Pascagoula team bus had only made it to Magee before the police officer escorting the team bus received word to turn the Panthers around. When they returned to the parking lot between War Memorial Stadium and Ingalls Field, Moreland said Pascagoula athletic director Luther Kuykendall delivered the news that the state tournament was off indefinitely.

“I remember how mad I was when we found out the tournament had been postponed due to court action, after we had pretty much manhandled everybody down here at South State,” Panther standout pitcher Jeffery Ellis told Stephenson, 10 years ago. “We didn’t have anything to do with that. We beat everybody that they put before us. We were mad. I know that no matter who went with us from down here in the South part of the state, we had already beaten them and beaten them convincingly. I know Starkville had Meredith Sanford, and he was good, but that’s all Starkville had. Tupelo had kind of snuck in the back door. So we didn’t feel like there was anybody that could match up with us in a double-elimination tournament. (Sanford) may have beaten me or Seaman one time, but they had nobody after him.”

Held up in court

A hearing was scheduled for May 31 in Hattiesburg, which was nine days after the state tournament was postponed.

Meanwhile, the Panthers continued to practice, though with graduation approaching the team’s seniors in particular were caught in a tough spot. The Pascagoula players tried their best to keep up with any news regarding when and if the state tournament might continue.

“Back then, there was obviously no texting, no social media, so pretty much all that we were getting was what the powers that be were telling (Olsen) and he was telling us, or what we read in the paper,” Ellis said. “There wasn’t much information passed.”

The hearing took place in Hattiesburg on a Thursday, with Chancery Court Judge Robert Taylor Jr. presiding. Pierce, MHSAA officials, umpires Phillips and Turner Jones and the parents of the Hattiesburg players testified over the course of 12 hours. Olsen was among those called as potential witnesses, but as such were not allowed in the courtroom.

Taylor vowed to make a ruling swiftly, and did so the following Monday, June 4. Not surprisingly, he ruled in Hattiesburg’s favor, writing that the MHSAA did not observe its own due process by failing to grant the Tigers a hearing following the South State forfeit.

“I sat in the witness room from probably 8 o’clock in the morning until late in the afternoon, and never got to called to testify,” Olsen told Stephenson. “And I really don’t know what I would have said if I had been put on the stand. For that to happen, it was really kind of insane. The whole way it played out was crummy, even more so for the kids. All four (teams) had worked so hard to get to that point, and then for the court to rule the way they ruled, I think, didn’t make a bit of sense.”

Hattiesburg was back in the state tournament. The only question was, would anyone else agree to play against them?

The state tournament was eventually re-scheduled to begin on Monday, June 11 at St. Andrew’s High School in Ridgeland. However, on the Friday before, the athletic directors from Pascagoula, Tupelo and Starkville met via conference call and mutually agreed not to participate in the state tournament.

Olsen and his players were disappointed, but not surprised.

“We ended up not working out as much as we needed to,” Olsen told Stephenson. “The longer it went on, we knew we weren’t going to go back up there. If it had been a week or so, the kids would have still been fresh. But it just took all the luster out of it.

“It would have been too hard to get all the kids back together. We’d been away from it for two or three weeks, and we weren’t going to try to get our kids back. They had made a mess of it to begin with. And I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, and coach Kuykendall decided we weren’t going to continue.”

Said Ellis, “I guess when graduation got close, you kind of figured they were never going to play it. Every (school) had different graduation dates or whatever. We had a big meeting up in the stands at the field and (Olsen) told us it wasn’t going to be played.”

The aftermath

Having fought for nearly a month in court to be reinstated into the state tournament, Hattiesburg wasn’t just going to drop out once the tournament was re-scheduled, however.

The Tigers vowed to play on, and when it became clear the other three teams would not participate, the MHSAA declared Hattiesburg state champions by default. However, the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, then considered the statewide authority on high school sports, ranked Pascagoula No. 1 in its postseason baseball poll, with Hattiesburg considerably farther down the list.

“It was a little consolation that the Clarion-Ledger wound up ranking us No. 1, which was good to know. And Hattiesburg, they wound up eighth,” Mike Moreland told Stephenson.

Marsh and the MHSAA promised to keep up the legal fight, and appealed the action all the way to the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 1987, the state’s high court overturned the Hattiesburg injunction, ruling that the players’ parents had no grounds to challenge the MHSAA in court without the school’s participation.

The Tigers were subsequently stripped of the state championship from three years earlier. Nevertheless, that Hattiesburg was eventually stripped of the 1984 state championship does little to heal the old wounds in Pascagoula to this day.

“That was my first year as a head coach, and we had the best team in the state in my opinion,” Olsen said, this week. “You just nver know how many chances you’re gonna get to play for or win a state championship. We probably would have won it that year, but turns out it would be 12 years later before we actually did win one.”

Pascagoula was again a state contender in 1985, winning a school-record 20 straight games at one stretch, but lost twice to eventual state champion Gulfport in the division championship tournament and did not qualify for South State (the MHSAA went to its familiar 5-class system in 1985, with the Panthers in 5A). Pascagoula would not win another baseball state championship until 1996.

The villain

Pierce has had a few health scares in recent years, but he is still alive and living in Hattiesburg.. He retired after several years as principal at Brookhaven High School following his coaching career at Hattiesburg, but remains active in the Southern Miss baseball Dugout Club.

He also remained defiant about the events of 1984 10 years ago when speaking to Stephenson.

“The only reason I have regrets was that we were not able to play for a state championship,” Pierce said. “Everybody tried to blame us on that deal, but it was actually Jackson Wingfield that was responsible for us not playing in the state championship, because they were the ones that filed a suit that stopped the state championship from being played. … It was one of those things that hurt all of us at the time.”

Pierce said he’s confident Hattiesburg only lost in the Supreme Court via a technicality, that if the school district had joined the action they would have won the appeal. However, he said, school officials were content to let the matter drop.

After all, despite what the record book says, the Tigers still have the state championship trophy from 1984. And they haven’t been shy over the years about letting opponents know they consider themselves that year’s champion despite the MHSAA’s subsequent vacation of the title.

“They had it all over their stadium,” Olsen, who coached the Panthers until 2010, said. “You’d go to their field and you saw signs that said ”84 state champs’ and that was kind of a slap in the face for all of us. I really was kind of appalled that they would recognize themselves as state champions. (The MHSAA) did eventually go back and rescind what they’d done and try to right a wrong, but I didn’t think Hattiesburg in the first place should have claimed it. Out of the four (teams), they were the fourth-best in my opinion.”

Pierce said that while his actions ultimately caused all the controversy, the fact that Pascagoula, Tupelo and Starkville pulled out of the re-scheduled state tournament was not his fault. Nevertheless, he said he wishes it had played out differently.

“We were the only team willing to show up,” Pierce said. “It was three weeks into the summer. By that, we would receive the state championship and that’s what they determined. As far as do we rightfully deserve the state championship? I think state championships should be played for on the field. That’s the response I gave then, and that’s the response I’m giving now.”

Up Next: The entire timeline of the 1984 postseason.

(Part three of this three part series will be published on SouthMiss6 Sports Saturday.)