Once elite softball players under head coach Shelia Kilgore, the duo of Mandi Panter and Brandi Hall are paying it forward as coaches at Lupton Jr. High and Jasper High School

Words by JennyLynn Davis | Images by Blakeney Clouse

“My son asked me where our championship trophies are. I told him, ‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because the feeling of winning is always in our hearts,’” Mandi Panter says, reflecting on her years as a softball player at Walker High School.

 “But we can still pull out the rings if we need to!” her twin sister, Brandi Hall, adds with a laugh. “Those experiences are just indescribable feelings that can’t be taken away.”

 Mandi and Brandi began playing softball at age four and built their skills exceptionally over the years through playing school and summer ball. After finishing their time at Lupton Jr. High School, they started at Walker, where they played softball.

 “We had a phenomenal team,” Brandi says. “A lot of the girls were actually our rivals during summer ball, but once we all got together on the field during school ball season, we were like a well-oiled machine. We worked hard to get where we were.”

 Mandi and Brandi played in the 6A Alabama High School Softball State Championship all four years of high school, with victories in their junior and senior years. The duo was coached by Shelia Kilgore and her husband, Ronnie, and by their father, Ronnie Brown. While all the coaches had a significant impact on their performance, Mandi and Brandi have a fond appreciation for Shelia.

 “You’d never have known back then that she was the coach,” Mandi laughs. “She’d always show up in this long leather coat that almost dragged the ground. You can’t think of her without thinking of that coat.” 

 While Kilgore may not have always looked the part, she still provided the leadership and structure her team needed to succeed. “Shelia is, without a doubt, the reason we made it the way we did,” Mandi says. “She was such a special, integral part of our softball careers, and she taught us lessons that are just as valuable off the field as they are on.”

 “Our work ethic definitely comes from her teaching,” Brandi adds. “She taught us that things were not always going to go our way, but we just had to keep playing the game.”  

A fond memory Mandi and Brandi still carry with them is the specific way Shelia helped the team prepare to play in the championship game each year. “We’d arrive in Montgomery and before we’d even get any food or check in to the hotel, she’d take us to the field at Lagoon Park where we’d be playing,” says Mandi. “She’d have us walk around the field, pick up the dirt and run it through our fingers, smell the grass, note the distance between the bases, and see that it was all the same as the field we played on at home, just in a different physical location.”

 “She wanted us to get out of our heads and be in the moment because it’s pretty much impossible to do that while you’re playing,” says Brandi. “When you’re in the midst of a game, you can’t enjoy anything beyond the grind of playing to win, but she allowed us simply to take it all in for a moment.”

 Brandi and Mandi are also profoundly grateful to their parents for instilling in them the values by which they guide their lives. “We’re so thankful for our parents and all they did to ensure we were successful on and off the field,” Brandi says. “They never missed a game back then, and they still don’t miss our games, even though we’re the coaches now.”

 “At the time, we didn’t realize what extremes they went to for us,” Mandi says. “Mom would constantly rearrange her work schedule and Dad even drove overnight to South Carolina while battling the flu, just to be at one of our travel ball games. We realize now what all they did, and we can’t thank them enough.”

 After their high school softball career ended, Mandi and Brandi earned softball scholarships to the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). They played college ball while completing their schooling to become educators and coaches.

Mandi is now a physical education instructor and volleyball coach at Lupton Jr. High School, where she will soon begin her 20th year, while Brandi soon begins her seventh year as a softball coach and girls athletic PE instructor at Jasper High School.

 Mandi and Brandi still come as a package deal. They live on the same street and go to the same church. Their sons are on the same sports teams, and their husbands even coach for the same football team. Everything in their lives has happened together.

 They can’t imagine it any other way. 78