By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASCAGOULA — Monday marked the third straight day since school started that Pascagoula head baseball coach Colton Caver was absent from campus.

Sources close to the situation indicated to SouthMiss6 Sports late last week that Caver, who was prepping for his fourth season at the helm of the Panthers, was placed on administrative leave with pay after a meeting with school system administration Wednesday morning, just before school started on Thursday.

Among those he met with were School Superintendent Caterria Payton and Athletics Director John Archie, among others.

No other details of the ongoing situation are known officially as of yet. A decision on Caver’s future is expected to come this week.

Neither Caver or Archie would comment when reached by SouthMiss6 Sports.

The Panthers finished 7-21 overall last season and missed the Class 6A South State playoffs for the second time in Caver’s three seasons in charge.

He is 28-56 overall as the head coach at PHS.

Two years ago, Caver made history in prep baseball in Jackson County by becoming the first non-alumnus of Pascagoula High School to guide the Panther baseball program into action on the diamond.

When Caver made his head coaching debut in the visitor’s dugout against perennial state power East Central, it marked the first time since 1979 that a former Panther player was not the head coach of a Pascagoula baseball team.

The last time PHS was led into battle without a former Panther standout at the helm was in 1979, when Mike Arbuckle was the head coach.

Since then, Donnie Davis, Johnny Olsen, John Tomes and Richie Tillman were the head coaches for the PHS baseball team, with 40 years of that belonging to the Olsen and Tillman eras.

Caver’s first season at the helm didn’t go as planned.

Pascagoula went into the last week of league play and the regular season in 2024 still in the thick of the playoff chase, just a game behind West Harrison in the region race as the two teams began a key three game series that would decide the all-important fourth slot in the standings.

In game one, in Pascagoula, the teams went into the top of the seventh stanza all knotted up at 4-4 before the Hurricanes rallied for three runs to pull out a 7-4 win in the final at-bat and clinch the final playoff berth.

But after Pascagoula came back to beat West Harrison in the final two games of the season after that decisive first game in the series, PHS used that momentum to qualify for the state playoffs in 2025 as the fourth and final seed in the region. Pearl River Central swept PHS in the first round of the postseason.

Then, this past season, it was a repeat of year one under Caver. Again, in the final week of regular season play, Gautier nipped the Panthers by one run for the second time in 24 hours, with a 2-1 win at home to end the season for both teams.

That outcome, combined with a 1-0 road win for the Gators Thursday night, eliminated Pascagoula from state playoff contention.

The two losses by PHS opened the door for Long Beach to take the fourth and final seed from Region 4-6A, despite an 8-20 overall record.

Pascagoula hasn’t won a state playoff game since 2021, when under Tillman the Panthers lost in the Class 5A state championship round.