Remembering Magnolia Academy Baseball – (1977-1982) – Rick Clarke's Diary of a Mad Baseball Coach

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In a six season period from 1977-1982, the Magnolia Academy Raiders won 168 games, an unprecedented 26 championships, including 3 consecutive MPSA AA state championships in 1979 (31-3), 1980 (27-4), and 1981 (40-5), and probably everyone believes we should have won our first state championship in 1978 (26-7), making it four in a row.

That’s 124 wins in a four-year period; a rarity in those days. Pretty common today.

The 1981 team was the first Mississippi high school team to win 40 games in a season. Corinth and New Hope won more years later. That’s still a MAIS (or whatever they call it now; it was the MPSA back then.) record for wins in a season over 40 years later. (Note: The wins record was tied during the 2023 season by Magnolia Heights… 42 years later). Nobody even knew they tied a state record. Jackson Prep won 39 games in 2024.

The program was built around discipline, consistency, and sound fundamentals. Our motto was Striving for Baseball Excellence. We could hit, hit with power, run the bases, bunt our way on, bunt to move runners and score runners, pitch well, throw strikes and play solid defense. We made the routine plays most of the time and the great plays some of the time. We didn’t walk people unless we wanted to and we didn’t make many errors. Our opponents had to get a lot of hits to outscore us.

One of the things that points to this is the way the Raiders performed in the three state championship series: 6 consecutive wins and 5 of the 6 wins were by shutouts; 4-0 and 6-0 over Greenville Christian in 1979, 8-0 and 10-0 over Humphreys Academy in 1980, and 8-0 in the first game of the series against Kirk Academy in 1981.

Our record setting 40th win was the 1981 championship game against Kirk by the score of 17-4.

We were undefeated and outscored opponents 53-4 in 6 state championship games.

Former Raider Anthony Thomas said this about Magnolia Academy Baseball: “I attribute our success to the one who set the standard and refused to accept anything but our best, Rick Clarke. Minus his unrelenting and maniacal pursuit of excellence, we were just goofballs.”

That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten in baseball.

Magnolia Academy Baseball truly was a “class act” and ahead of it’s time.