Sports Archive

Sometimes the greatest teams are not the ones with the great players, but rather the great teammates. Kayla Martin was one of those great teammates for the Crestview Lady Bulldogs softball team as a senior this year.

John Toolan has been on the job as Crestview High School’s head softball coach for a little less than a year but has run the program since being named the interim coach early last summer. While serving as interim, Toolan ran his first Crestview Lady Bulldogs Softball Camp. Anyone thinking the second time around might be easier, would be wrong.

Some people mark the beginning of summer with the end of the school year, others might consider Memorial Day as the official start of the season and some the official passing of the summer solstice. But for more than two decades many young baseball players in Crestview have known summer is here when they attended the Crestview Bulldogs Baseball Camp.

It has been an impressive senior year for Anthony St. Vincent.

Crestview’s star baseball player signed a scholarship with Northwest Florida State College earlier this year to play for the Raiders. He had a stellar senior season on the diamond for the Bulldogs and was an honors graduate from Crestview High School. And he’s been selected to play in the Pensacola Sports Association All-Star game.

It’s said the biggest jump in improvement most college athletes make happens in their second year. If that’s the case for Kayleb Wagner, the former record-setting Baker running back, he could be set for an impressive fall his second go around at Southern Illinois University.

Brent Zessin, Baker’s veteran boys basketball coach, has announced his retirement. Zessin, a 40-year coaching veteran, has been at Baker for six years after a lengthy career in Alabama.

For many high school coaches and athletes, the first week or two of summer is spent as counselors and coaches at a team’s youth skills camp. That holds true at Crestview High School as well as current Lady Bulldog softball players instruct future Lady Bulldogs.

In what has become an early summer rite of passage, the Crestview Bulldogs Baseball Camp is scheduled for May 28-29 from 9 a.m. to noon. Registration starts at 8 a.m. May 28 at the Crestview High School baseball complex. Cost of the camp, which is open for players ages 4-13, is $75 and includes a T-shirt and pizza on Wednesday as well as admission to the Justin Richards Scholarship Tournament early next month.

The Crestview football team wraps up spring practice Thursday night when the Bulldogs travel to DeFuniak Springs to take on the Walton Braves led by former Bulldog assistant coach Keith White.

It’s official, you can go home again, or at least Matt Brunson can. For the third time in his coaching career, and the second time as a head coach, Brunson, 1987 Baker graduate, will be roaming the sidelines and calling the shots when the 2024 season kicks off in August.