The softball field at Kosciusko High School was named to honor the team's number one fan and long time assistant coach Peggy Ables in a ceremony prior to the February 15 game with Union. She passed away this year.
“It's great, it's wonderful. She gave all her time to softball,” her husband Larry said of the honor.
“It was the right thing to do,” said coach Tony Terry. “When you think of softball in Kosciusko you think of Peggy Ables.”
Mrs. Ables was an assistant softball coach at Kosciusko when Terry took over as coach in 2005 and remained in that capacity until her retirement in 2015. She continued to support the team, attending games home and away, including trips to the University of Southern Mississippi when the Lady Whippets won state championships in 2018 and last year.
“She was a huge fan. She never missed a home game,” Terry said.
Her husband was her biggest fan. “I wouldn't be scared to put her up against any coach. She knew just as much or maybe a little more in any sport, football, baseball, basketball, softball, you name it.”
“It's definitely an honor,” her son Kosciusko recreation director Todd Ables said. “We knew about the sign, but naming the field after her was kind of a shock. We didn't see that coming, but we were more than happy.”
Terry knew Mrs. Ables most of his life. “She was like family. At one time she taught my son's Sunday school class.”
Their professional relationship began when he was the baseball coach at Durant and she was on his staff. “She would drive the bus and did all that stuff.”
Terry said she was a big help when he transitioned from baseball to softball at Kosciusko.
Mrs. Ables started the youth softball program in Kosciusko. “She made sure the girls always got equal chance as the boys,” Terry said.
Softball was definitely her first love, but not her only sport. She was a former girls soccer coach at Kosciusko and after retiring frm Kosciusko she coached junior high boys basketball at Central Holmes Academy, with a distrait championship.
Mrs. Ables taught junior high math at Kosciusko.
