If there is anyone with more patience and perseverance than Forrest senior hurler Ashley Milligan, I have not met them.

Milligan has been waiting in the wings for three years to be the number one pitcher in the circle for the Lady Rockets and just as she was about to shine last year, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, wiping out the season and now she has to wait some more.

“It really hurt not playing, it broke me a little bit, but it also made me work even harder to get ready for this year,” Milligan said. “This year we are going to come back hard, we are working our tails off and we want to be the first team to go back-to-back in school history.”

Milligan recently took care of some other unfinished business when she signed a Letter of Intent to play softball at Walters State Community College in Morristown.

“I’m super blessed to be able to go to Walters State, I would so much rather to go to a two-year school and play right away, I could go down there and break records right off the bat if I wanted to,” Milligan said.

Milligan waited behind a great Forrest pitcher in Lauren Gillespie and everyone got a real glimpse of what Milligan could do by the end of the 2018-2019 championship season when she finished the year with a 6-0 record, including tossing a three-hit shutout in the District 12-AA title game over Giles County and combining with Gillespie in a 10-0 win over Westmoreland in a state sectional game that catapulted the Lady Rockets to their 17th state tournament appearance and third state crown.

“In her sophomore year she had to pitch behind Lauren a little bit, but those two together were really dominant and that probably led to a lot of our success,” Forrest coach Shelby Lightfoot said. “A little bit later in the season we probably didn’t give her as much as a fair shake that she deserved because she was phenomenal that year.”

Milligan was poised for a breakout season last year, starting the season with a 2-1 record before prep sports were cancelled due to the pandemic.

“Going in to last year before COVID hit we had that conversation, that hey this is your year and we were so excited to see what she was going to bring,” Lightfoot said. “We didn’t get any practice games, we went right in playing state champs (Summertown) and she was just lights out and fabulous.”

“She is very charismatic and our team really likes that about her, her confidence on the mound is just something we haven’t had in a while because she really gets fired up and gets the team fired up and she is exciting to watch.”

The defending state champion Lady Rockets will more than likely take the field this year with Milligan owning the circle as they attempt to win back-to-back state titles.

“It all starts on the mound,” Lightfoot said. “The years we have won state, number one was our pitching, me, Katie Warrick, Lauren and now Ashely is that caliber of pitcher.”

“If we can hold teams down to one or two runs we think that we play good enough defense and have a good enough offense to win those games.”

With basically a year’s worth of rest and even more years of pent up energy, look for Milligan to be one of the dominant pitchers in all of Class 2A in 2020-2021 and it is certain that she will make her mark as one of the best pitchers to come out of the storied Chapel Hill program.

“I’m super excited and the expectation is for us to go all the way and with our stacked senior class we definitely can do that,” Milligan said. “We have even seniors, our whole infield is seniors except catcher, we are a wall, and if it’s hit in the dirt, it’s not getting through.”

Milligan has a solid 3.4 GPA and wants to study culinary arts at Walters State.