2023SummerWarriorWEB

Champions D iamond W arriors B ring H ome T wo B ig T rophies

standing LSU Eu nice Bengals to cruise into the championship. ECCC matched championship and needed to defeat the Ben gals once, while LSU Eunice had to take down up with LSU Eunice in the

2023 was a historic year for the ECCC Warrior baseball team. Led by 17th-year head coach Neal Holliman, third-year pitching coach Kyle Flessner, and first-year hitting coach Matt Crowder, the team clinched both the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference and the NJCAA Region 23 Championships. With the NJCAA Region 23 championship, the Warriors earned the program’s first-ever bid to the NJCAA DII World Series held in Enid, Oklahoma. To claim the MACCC championship, the Warriors had to battle through a gauntlet of a regular season that saw match ups with numerous NJCAA top-10 programs. In the end, the Warriors closed out the regular season with a 23-5 conference record that saw key wins against teams such as Meridian, Pearl River, and Jones College. The Warriors clinched the title in the final regular season series of the year with a 10-3 win in game one against East Mississippi. The championship was the Warriors’ first since 2016 when they won the MACJC State Tournament. The playoff structure changed the following season to eliminate the tournament and name the champion based on regular season results. With the championship, the Warriors earned a bye into the NJCAA Region 23 tournament held in Eunice, Louisiana – the home to the then-ranked No. 1 team in the country – LSU Eunice. The Warriors took the Region 23 tournament by storm picking up wins against Itawamba, Meridian, and the home

ECCC twice. LSU Eunice won the first

championship matchup, 13-1, but the Warriors bounced back in game two with

Head Warrior Baseball Coach Neal Holliman and MACCC Commissioner Steve Martin

an 8-2 victory to claim the school’s second ever Region 23 baseball championship, the last coming in 2005. Along with the title, ECCC’s Ramie Harrison was named NJCAA Region 23 Tournament MVP, while Coach Holliman earned Region 23 Coach of the Year honors. The Region 23 championship earned the Warriors a spot

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