A year to remember

Lyons’ stellar season propels Lady Eagles to 5A state title

Vilonia’s Buggy Lyons, show here batting during a 2014 game, is the 2015 River Valley & Ozark Edition Softball Player of the Year after leading the Lady Eagles to the Class 5A State Championship.
Vilonia’s Buggy Lyons, show here batting during a 2014 game, is the 2015 River Valley & Ozark Edition Softball Player of the Year after leading the Lady Eagles to the Class 5A State Championship.

Ashley “Buggy” Lyons’ senior softball season couldn’t have been any better.

A year after a tornado-interrupted spring and her junior year that saw Vilonia’s softball team fall to White Hall in the Class 5A state final, Lyons and the Lady Eagles soared in 2015.

They finished 28-4, winners of their final 23 games, including a 5-2 win over Paragould in the state championship game at the University of Arkansas’ Bogle Park that reversed the shock and disappointment of 2014.

Lyons’ three-run home run made the difference, and she was named MVP of the Class 5A state tournament.

“After everything we’d been through last year, it meant a lot that our team was able to pull it all together and string those hits together that we needed in order to get us our runs, and our defense was able to build a brick wall to back up our pitcher,” Lyons said.

And now she is the River Valley & Ozarks Edition Softball Player of the Year for 2015.

In the championship game, the Lady Eagles trailed 2-1 in the fifth inning before tying the game and then taking the lead on only her second home run of the season.

None has been bigger.

“We were all really tense before that, and after we went ahead, our pitcher was able to have some cushion, and it was OK if we allowed a run,” she said. “We knew we could relax a little but still not let our guard down.”

They didn’t, and the Lady Eagles took home their first state softball title since 2007.

While the Lyons family escaped property damage during the 2014 tornado, like everyone else in town, they were affected.

“The whole week after the tornado, even if you weren’t hit or directly affected, you were down in the middle of it helping everybody else,” Lyons said.

Following the storm, she said, she thought the softball team was running on adrenaline to the state final.

“We were all shell-shocked,” she said. “We hadn’t been up there since my freshman year. We got to the semifinals when I was a sophomore. There were a lot of people there. We had a lot of nerves, but we thought, ‘We’ve made it through everything else; let’s see if we can do this.’

“And even though we lost, it was still good that we could all stick together.”

Those seeds planted a year ago bore impressive fruit in 2015, and Lyons, an infielder who was also selected to play in the Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star softball games last week, was an important cog.

“She’s one of those kids that come around once in your coaching career,” Vilonia coach Kevin Sullivan said. “She’s not the most athletically blessed. In fact, I probably had 10 other girls who were more athletic, but she does everything right.

“She comes to work every day. She’s the first one there and the last to leave. There was not one day that she didn’t come up after practice and say thank you. Her uniform was by far the nastiest after every practice because she sold out on every play.”

For her senior season, Lyons hit .393. She recorded 33 hits (20 singles, 11 doubles and the two home runs), 36 RBIs and 31 runs scored. She struck out just four times all season.

“She never really got tired of the details, which is huge in our sport,” Sullivan said. “Anything that got monotonous for the other kids didn’t for her. We hit a lot off the tee, and by May, some of them are going through the motions, but she’s not like that. She’s looking to get better and work on something to get better every day.”

As an example, he pointed out that a couple of weeks after the state championship, she was emailing him to go hit, aiming to get ready for All-Star Week.

“That’s the kind of kid she is,” Sullivan said.

Lyons, the daughter of Jimmy and Sandy Lyons, moved to Vilonia from North Little Rock just before she started kindergarten.

Her given name is Ashley, but she said she’s been “Buggy” since she was a toddler.

“I have a sister six years older, and we both wanted that one-on-one attention,” she explained. “So my mom would call it our snuggle time. I figured out if I let her go first, I’d get more time, so my mom started calling me Snugglebug, and that became Buggy.

“When I started playing softball, there would be three or four Ashleys on the team, so Mom said, ‘Just call her Buggy.’ Now everybody calls me that — even our principal, assistant principal and all my teachers.”

She’s played softball since she was 4, and she’ll continue next year at Williams Baptist College in Walnut Ridge after considering other offers from Arkansas Tech, University of the Ozarks and the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

“I went and visited to see what I liked best, and Williams felt like home,” she said. “I like being at a smaller school, and with it being a private Christian college, that made it perfect.”

Sullivan said he thinks it is a good decision.

“Some kids get up there and get homesick, and for some, there’s not enough to do outside of school, but I don’t think either of those will be a problem for her,” he said. “She’ll be academically sound and excited to be there. I think it’ll be good for her.”

Lyons, a VHS honor graduate with a 3.9 GPA, said she plans to study biology at Williams, then pursue graduate school in physical therapy at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

She is active with the Vilonia First Baptist Church youth group, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Special Olympics. Her sister, Jamie, participates in softball and track and field with Special Olympics.

Lyons said the Lady Eagles had been blessed to have “a great Christian example” in Sullivan and former coach Calvin Robinette, now an assistant coach at Conway. Sullivan moved up to the head coaching position after serving as Robinette’s assistant.

“Our nerves were gone this year,” Lyons said of the attitude at the state final. “We were like, ‘All right, this is our year; it’s our time to do this. Let’s get out there and play ball.’

“I told God, ‘You’re just going to have to handle it; I can’t do this on my own.’ And he was there with me to bring me comfort.”

Upcoming Events