PHOTO BY BECCA GUYNES Bogue Chitto head baseball coach Seth Avants and assistant coach Adam Moak.

You would be hard pressed to write a better script for Bogue Chitto alum Seth Avants in his first year as head baseball coach at his alma mater.

The historians of Bogue Chitto athletics can’t even remember the last time the Bobcats won a region championship in baseball.

That’s exactly what Avants and his Bogue Chitto boys did in 2025, as they finished 14-12 overall and won Region 7-2A before making the second round of the MHSAA 2A postseason.

For his historical debut season, Avants has been named The 2025 Daily Leader All-Area Baseball Coach of the Year.

Avants came back home after leading the baseball program at Lawrence County beginning in 2020 as the head coach in Monticello.

It took a while for him to get his first full squad together, as the Bogue Chitto basketball team went on a deep run in the postseason that bled over into baseball.

Once the whole team was together, BC began to gel. Their biggest wins of the season came with a pair of victories over Loyd Star (8-5, 15-3) that put them in first place in the region. They then solidified that spot by sweeping West Lincoln the following week (7-3, 11-1, 14-0).

A former BC standout who played collegiately at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, the care of the program is a personal one for Avants. Adam Moak, his assistant coach, coached him in high school.

Avants inherited the program from his mentor, BC principal Gareth Sartin. He coached his oldest son, Hayden, this season and has two younger boys that will undoubtedly come through the program later.

BC reached the state semifinals as a 1A team back in 2011 and the Bobcats had some good teams under Mike Hodges back in the mid-1990s, but even the most faithful followers are hard pressed to come up with an exact date of when Bogue Chitto last won a district or region title. 

With only three seniors graduating in Warren Wallace, Gatlin Guynes, and Noah Magee, the hope is the wait won’t be nearly as long for the next BC title, especially with BC dropping to the 1A ranks next season due to redistricting.

Building a culture within a program is always easier with early success, which builds a wave of momentum that Avants and his Bobcats hope to ride well into the future.