CABOT — Chris Cope had led Dardanelle to a state softball championship in 2007 and Searcy to one in 2011 before making history with Cabot in 2019.
Cope’s Lady Panthers denied Bentonville a fourth consecutive championship — and won the first in Cabot High School history — with a 5-3 victory in the Class 6A title game at the University of Arkansas’ Bogle Park recently.
“It took everybody, from the players to the subs in the dugout to the coaching staff,” Cope said. “It was just an overall effort this year — not just two or three standouts.”
Trailing 3-1 in the final, the Lady Panthers batted around in the sixth, and with two outs, scored four runs to set the margin. The big hit was a two-run single by senior catcher Jaden Potter.
“Being able to fight back with my best friends and win and dog-pile and cheer afterward was amazing,” Potter said. “I’ve watched the video of us winning countless times, and I still get chills watching the last inning. It’s just a great way to end my high school career and enter into my college career with that same energy.”
The second seed from the 6A-Central, Cabot received a first-round bye, then beat Rogers, third from the West, in the quarterfinals, 10-2; and Bentonville West, top seed from the West, in the semis, 6-3; before taking down Bentonville, second from the West, in the championship.
Cabot closed 24-5.
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Cope, 46, grew up in Beebe, graduating from Beebe High School in 1991. There he competed in everything — football, basketball, track and field, tennis. BHS didn’t offer baseball then, so he played American Legion ball in Cabot during the summers.
He played baseball at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia for a year before transferring to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, where he focused on academics.
Cope said he always wanted to coach.
“I had some good coaches growing up, from junior high through high school,” he said. “My family was a bunch of teachers, so I fell in love with [education] early.”
Cope took his first teaching job in 1996 at Harrisburg in northeast Arkansas. His coaching assignments were football, basketball and softball, which was then the slow-pitch version of the sport.
“I just kind of fell into softball,” he said. “I stayed with it all these years. It’s a faster-paced game than baseball, and the girls play hard. There’s a lot of cheering going on in the dugout, so there’s a lot of excitement.”
From Harrisburg, Cope went to Dardanelle, then to Siloam Springs before returning closer to home at Cabot in 2012.
“I started out in lower classifications, and each stop, I’ve moved up a step,” he said. “I worked myself up the ladder.”
Before Cope’s arrival, the Lady Panthers had been pretty competitive over the years but had been down for a few seasons.
“We just started from scratch,” Cope said. “We kept coaching and building on what was here, and sometimes you get new life, which helps.”
Cabot was led in 2019 by three senior starters — Potter at catcher, Sami Romano at pitcher and Skylar Reed in right field.
“They’ve been here for four years and have become real good leaders,” Cope said. “They knew what it took.”
When that group was in the eighth grade, Cabot fell in the state championship game to North Little Rock. When they were freshmen, the Lady Panthers advanced to the quarterfinals. When they were sophomores and juniors, Cabot went to the semifinals — falling both times to Bentonville, the eventual champion.
“They knew what it took to win,” Cope said of his trio. “They were the building blocks.”
He said the Lady Panthers never panicked when they got behind, even by two runs late in the championship game.
“It was exciting,” he said. “We’d had to do it a couple of times already. They knew they had it, and they never got down. They knew at some point they were going to hit it and do what they needed to do to win.
“We’ve been in that situation before, and we’ve worked on it in practice — who’s going to get the big hit? Jaden has done it.”
They’d known for months that hitting would be a team strength.
“We knew coming in we had to score a lot of runs, and that’s what we did,” Cope said.
Potter will play for Wellesley College, an NCAA Division III school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, next year.
“Going into the season, I had no idea how far we would go or how well we would do,” she said. “I had never gotten to experience a state-championship game, so it was a dream come true — just being there and being able to play.”
Romano will play for Evangel University, an NAIA school in Springfield, Missouri.
Riley Walthall, the junior center fielder who was named MVP of the state tournament, will lead the Lady Panthers next year.
“She had a good tournament,” Cope said. “She hit a big home run that boosted us in our first game against Rogers, then a couple of big hits against Bentonville West that put us ahead. She threw out a couple of girls from the outfield.”
And even though they’ll miss those three seniors, next year’s Lady Panthers will aim for a repeat.
“We’ll have seven starters back and be senior-heavy next year,” Cope said.