MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Kevin Thompson, a veteran of the coaching ranks but in his first season leading Marion County, sat on a softball bucket Wednesday evening soon after the Lady Warriors’ 13-7 comeback win over Summertown to reach the semifinals of the TSSAA Class 2A state tournament.
And then, after a day full of weather delays at the Spring Fling, he took the time to shower his team with well-deserved praise.
The Lady Warriors have been one of the Chattanooga area’s biggest sports success stories of the 2025-26 school year, as they now sit at 34 wins for the season and are one victory shy of what would be their first appearance in the state championship matchup. A year after Marion County went 16-17, the Lady Warriors are making the most of the program’s sixth appearance in the state tournament but their first trip to the Spring Fling since 2019.
Not that any of that is the bottom line for Thompson.
“If by the end of the season everybody on the team loves one another, I have won,” said Thompson, who has 319 totals wins in a successful career with highlights that included leading Alabama’s North Jackson to that state’s Class 4A title in 2021. “I feel it in my heart that our girls are there. They are there.