State baseball, softball finals to remain in Oxford, Jacksonville

By KYLE PARMLEY

The Alabama High School Athletic Association announced in early December an agreement to keep the state baseball and softball championships in the same place for at least the next five years.

The AHSAA’s agreement with the city of Oxford and Jacksonville State University will keep the baseball and softball championships in Calhoun County through 2027, with the same setup that was used for the first time in 2022.

Oxford’s Choccolocco Park hosted the state softball tournament for the first time in 2021 and returned in 2022 to complete a two-year contract, after the tournament was held at Montgomery’s Lagoon Park since its inception in 1986.

Moving the softball tournament to Oxford has allowed the state tournament finals in all seven AHSAA classifications to be held at the Signature Field, a stadium designed specifically for softball.

Baseball’s state final series for each of the seven classifications was previously held in Montgomery, but a scheduling conflict forced the state to relocate those championships last spring.

That led to holding the first game of each classification’s final series at Choccolocco Park, with the second and third games the following day at Jacksonville State University’s Rudy Abbott Field at Jim Case Stadium.

“We are excited to have our state championships in both sports locked in for the next five years and hopefully for many years to come,” said Alvin Briggs, AHSAA executive director. “Our experience with softball at Choccolocco Park and baseball last spring at Choccolocco Park and JSU was incredible. We had packed crowds for most of our games. Both sites provided real championship experiences and lifelong memories for our teams, schools and communities that traveled to attend.”

Choccolocco Park in Oxford has signature fields for baseball and softball, in addition to a multi-field complex that is utilized for the softball tournament games leading up to each classification’s championship game. The park has hosted many regional and national events throughout the last several years.

ELAINA BURT

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Burt, a junior at Briarwood Christian School who was named Miss Jefferson County’s Outstanding Teen last July, decided to take action. She started a nonprofit called Charlie’s Chance and now works to raise awareness about epilepsy, advocate for people suffering from it and raise money to enrich their lives.

She took it upon herself to organize a fundraising gala for Epilepsy Foundation Alabama this past November. The gala, Wings of Hope, drew about 200 people and raised more than $32,000.

Sara Franklin, a regional director for the Epilepsy Foundation who lives and works in Hoover, said she has been blown away by Burt and her contributions to the cause over the past two years.

Burt served as an ambassador for the Epilepsy Foundation, helping with events and encouraging family and friends to support seizure training so more people will know how to respond and help people when seizures occur.

She also helped call and email state legislators to gain support for the Seizure Safe Schools Act, which was passed by the Alabama Legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in the spring of 2021 and went into effect this school year. The act allows non-medical school personnel who are trained to administer nasal anti-seizure medication to do so in emergency situations when a school nurse is not on campus.

Burt has been a tremendous help, Franklin said. “She’s just had so many good ideas about how to raise epilepsy awareness and train people in seizure first aid,” Franklin said.

Also, Franklin was impressed that Burt took her support to the next level by coming up with the idea for a fundraising gala and organizing it herself, with some assistance from her mom. The event sold out and was a great success, Franklin said.

With limited staff, the Epilepsy Foundation Alabama organization didn’t have the bandwidth to do that themselves, Franklin said.

The Wings of Hope Gala was held at the Southern Museum of Flight, enabling Burt to combine her passion for epilepsy awareness with her passion for flying.

From a young age, she always thought flying was something she would like to try, she said. Her grandfather, Bob

Wall, is a pilot and paid for Burt’s first flying lesson as a 16th birthday present.

“I just fell in love from there,” she said. “It’s really just snowballed into one of my favorite passions.”

Her friends thought she was crazy for wanting to fly a plane, but she liked the challenge of doing something in a male-dominated field, she said. She hopes to study aviation at Auburn University and become a commercial airline pilot for Delta, she said.

Burt flies with Over the Mountain Aviation at the Shelby County Airport. She already has completed her first solo flight, first cross-country solo flight and first night flight and is scheduled for her Federal Aviation Administration check ride on Feb. 4 to get her private pilot license, she said.

While Burt is Miss Jefferson County’s Outstanding Teen for 2023, she hasn’t been in a lot of those types of competitions. So far, she has been in only three. She won her very first preliminary and became Miss Leeds Area’s Outstanding Teen in June 2021 and went on to be named second runner-up in the Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen competition in March 2022. The Miss Jefferson County’s Outstanding Teen competition last year was her third competition, and her fourth will be the Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen competition this coming March.

Burt said she feels honored to represent Jefferson County in this year’s state competition and has been thrilled to have already received $25,000 in scholarships through these competitions.

She won the Jessica Baeder Community Service Award at the state competition last year for her work involving epilepsy awareness.

In addition to flying planes and working to battle epilepsy, Burt has several other hobbies. She has been a member of the track team and cheerleading squad at Briarwood since her freshman year and currently participates on both the varsity sideline football and basketball cheerleading squads and varsity competitive cheer squad.

She also has been dancing since age 2 and currently dances with the Birmingham Dance Theatre in Hoover. When she was younger, she did many types of dancing, including ballet, hip hop, jazz, tap and clogging, but she now focuses on ballet en pointe, which is the talent she performs in the scholarship competitions.

Burt is the daughter of Zane Burt and Eric and Kalika Gibbons.

Teachers

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“She truly embraces every second of the day as a teachable moment and an opportunity for engagement,” said Erica Adams, Bluff Park’s literacy specialist, in a letter nominating Craig for the Hoover City Schools 2022-23 Elementary Teacher of the Year.

That’s one of many positive traits that helped Craig win the award.

Kevin Pughsley, a sixth-grade science teacher at Berry Middle School, was chosen as Hoover’s Secondary Teacher of the Year for the district. And now Craig and Pughsley, both known for their mastery of content, leadership in instruction and creative and hands-on learning techniques, are in consideration for Teacher of the Year for the state’s school board district 3.

Elementary Teacher Of The Year

Adams said many teachers know about Craig’s creative talent because her students continue to remember and share the songs Craig created and the concepts they cover for years to come.

“Success of her unique and engaging teaching style can be seen in her students’ continuous high level of achievement and growth each year,” Adams wrote. “In addition to academic growth, Mrs. Craig pushes her students to grow as people. She truly looks at each student as an individual and fosters an environment that allows them to believe in themselves and their potential as a student and person. Students never forget a year with Mrs. Craig.”

Geri Evans, Hoover’s 2021-22 Elementary Teacher of the Year, also from Bluff Park, said in a recommendation letter that Craig is a master teacher who has a comprehensive knowledge of curriculum and ability to engage students.

“She combines subjects seamlessly into meaningful units of study that require in-depth thinking and hands-on learning,” Evans wrote.

Craig, 42, is in her sixth year of teaching at Bluff Park Elementary and 19th year of teaching overall. She previously taught second grade for 13 years at Chelsea Park Elementary School in the Shelby County school system.

At Bluff Park, she has been the lead teacher for her grade level for six years and served as a mentor to new teachers the past three years. She also has been responsible for creating and coordinating science and social studies schoolwide presentations, such as a living wax museum and a market day where children created a product and then tried to “sell” it to help understand supply and demand concepts.

“Maghan Craig is what I like to call a quiet leader,” Bluff Park Elementary Principal Ami Weems said. “She’s one of those that even though she’s quiet, every time she speaks, someone listens. She’s also one of those that she does all things for the right reasons. She is never seeking the limelight, but she is definitely someone that deserves to be in it, and we’re incredibly proud of her.”

Craig does a great job of not only getting to know her students but also their parents, and she is well respected in the community, Weems said.

“She is definitely a teacher that never, ever stops learning,” Weems said. “She’s been in education for 19 years, and she is always seeking out an opportunity to grow.”

Craig said she is honored and shocked to be named Elementary Teacher of the Year. “I really wasn’t expecting it,” she said.

She got into teaching because she loved how some of the teachers in her formative years found ways to make learning fun. When she finished high school, she helped teach a Sunday school class at her church, and she enjoyed finding fun and creative ways to teach the lessons, she said.

Those things motivated her to pursue education as a career, and it became a passion for her, she said.

“I try to find ways to bring studying to life and have really hands-on, realistic learning experiences for the students,” she said.

While teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic was challenging, it also led her and other teachers to use technology in new ways that they continue to incorporate into their lesson plans, Craig said.

Also, while some teachers have gotten burned out in recent years, Craig said continuing to find new, fun ways to teach keeps her motivated. Also, getting a new group of students each year keeps it fresh and exciting because each group of students has different needs and challenges, she said. “It looks different every single year.”

She enjoys teaching first grade because most first graders love coming to school and love their teacher, she said. “It’s still all new at this age.”

Secondary Teacher Of The Year

Pughsley is in his sixth year at Berry Middle and 16th year of teaching overall. He previously taught 10 years as a sixth-grade science teacher at Calera Middle School in the Shelby County school system.

He was named Calera Middle School’s Teacher of the Year in 2008 and 2014, the Shelby County Middle School Teacher of the Year in 2014 and was his school district’s nominee for the Jacksonville State University Teacher Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Alabama Science Teacher Association Middle School Teacher of the Year for 2018.

Pughsley won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching in 2018 and was a teacher ambassador for the Alabama Educator Space Camp in 2017. In 2022, he led Berry students to a state championship in Tests in Engineering Aptitude Mathematics and Science, qualifying them to go to nationals in Dallas.

He is the head of the science department at his school, plans professional development for his fellow science teachers and mentors and teaches other teachers through the A Plus College Ready program.

Melissa Hadder, the principal at Berry, when asked how she would describe Pughsley, said it’s hard to narrow it down to one thing because he is the complete package as a teacher.

“Mr. Pughsley is an experienced teacher who works hard to help the students master the content,” Hadder said. “He is a phenomenal teacher and represents Berry very well.”

Pughsley is very skilled in terms of pedagogy, grounded in the content and good at incorporating literacy into the science curriculum, she said. He’s good at relating to middle school students, engaging with them and getting them to ask questions about the content, she said.

Chris Robbins, the chief academic officer for Hoover City Schools, was the principal at Berry when Pughsley was hired and said in a recommendation letter that he knew he had to hire Pughsley the second he began interviewing him.

“His love and concern for children, his ability to relate to adolescents and his thirst for professional growth shined through,” Robbins wrote. “With years of science teaching experience, an unbelievable expanse of expertise and certifications and a heart of gold, the outcome of the interview was a no-brainer.”

Robbins said that when he walked into Pughsley’s classroom, he always noticed that Pughsley’s students were engaged in collaborative discussions with other students in their groups, thinking critically about science standards and working to provide or discover evidence to support or disprove a scientific hypothesis.

Pughsley knows the science standards so well that he looks for and takes advantage of cross-curricular connections with other teachers in his interdisciplinary team,

Robbins said. Yet he is continually seeking out opportunities to grow in his knowledge of the content and standards, Robbins said.

Also, Pughsley possesses many of the personal and social traits necessary to build positive relationships with all his stakeholders, Robbins said.

“Parents, students and co-workers enjoy his consistent and fair approach to working with students,” Robbins wrote. “Kevin has a wonderful sense of humor, which is foundational for working successfully with middle school students.”

Pughsley said he feels blessed and humbled that the teachers at his school chose him to be their Teacher of the Year and that the leaders of the school district see him as a teacher who is making a difference in students’ lives.

“Growing up, I was easily distracted,” he said. “I would get in trouble. Academically, I wasn’t the best either, and I share that with my students. I let them know my pathway that got to here.”

When he was in high school, he had two teachers who showed him that education could be fun, energetic, exciting and engaging for students and that teaching can be tailored to meet the individual needs of learners, he said.

Those teachers made an impact on his life and helped motivate him to choose education as a profession, he said.

Now, he wants to help his students realize that, regardless of any past struggles, they can be successful in school and achieve their dreams, he said.

The last two years of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic have been very tough for teachers, and he wants to help his fellow teachers realize that they can push through the tough times and find that passion that they originally had, he said.

2023 SPRING