The End Of Sorters’ Competitive Era

Prairie Grove’s elimination from the District 4A-1 baseball tournament Thursday played out like a time lapse sequence of a program perpetually confronting adversity over the past five years.

Underscored, at first glance, by the Tigers’ 3-2 season-ending loss to Huntsville Thursday, is the tenacity of players, coaches and fans devoted to the community and determined to arise one more time out of the ashes of heartache — for both teams.

For Prairie Grove, the magnitude of raw emotion lingering just beneath the surface began with the death of Jarren Sorters on August 11, 2016, one month shy of his sixteenth birthday and escalated with the abrupt resignation of former head coach Chris Mileham in February, 2019 days before the season opener — manifested Thursday.

When Huntsville third baseman Slayter Watkins drove a double deep into left field, bringing in the winning run for the Eagles with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, this marked an end to the Sorters’ competitive era on the high school baseball field.

“I was looking for anything soft really. I was hitting around the ballpark the whole night and I was just waiting for my pitch,” Watkins said. “It felt really good and I had Tucker [Bradley] over there on first base and he ran like the wind.”

Overcoming Injury

Moments earlier Slayter stumbled and nearly fell on top of his opposite number, Prairie Grove senior third baseman Jackson Sorters, younger brother of Jarren; diving back to third during a pickoff throw from the plate.

A familiar voice rang out, “Slayter, quit stepping on him.”

Joey Sorters, father of Jarren and Jackson, was only half kidding.

“He [Jackson] is like my brother to me, that whole family is, they’re just family in general. We’ve been close to them ever since my sister [ Makayla Watkins] dated Jarren. It’s a legacy and it’s hard to forget somebody like Jarren Sorters,” Watkins said.

In the aftermath of that defeat, tears flowed freely for Prairie Grove, yet sportsmanship took priority. Jarren and Jackson’s parents, Joey and Donna Sorters, sought out Watkins, who was coming off a turf toe injury that short- circuited an outstanding football season last fall — the same injury that hampered Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl loss to Tom Brady and Tampa Bay.

Watkins had to wear a carbon fiber plate in his shoe, an adjustment that was hard to get used to after losing to Gentry in the conference- opener Sept. 25. Going into basketball Watkins still couldn’t move very well. Finally, at the start of baseball, it started to get better and he’s now able to maneuver better.

Familiar Storyline

That’s a storyline Prairie Grove knows all too well.

Jarren had a leg amputated above his knee and six weeks later was walking again only to discover that the sarcoma had spread to his lungs in March of 2016.

Meanwhile his teammates, including younger brother Jackson, who in a cancerfree world, would have got to play two seasons of high school baseball with Jarren, carried his memory through every at-bat and pitch.

At times, despondency set in, particularly during the tumultuous 2019 season that would have been Jarren’s senior year when the Tigers went 1-7 in the 4A-1 under interim head coach Jed Davis, now high school principal.

Ironically, Mileham, whose departure from the program was unpleasant, never held that against Davis, noting that Davis came to Prairie Grove to get out of coaching.

Through it all the family clung to memories, drawing inspiration from Jarren’s favorite Bible verse during his battle against sarcoma from Romans 8:18 — “For I consider the sufferings of the present are not worth comparing to the glory to be revealed to us.”

Sportsmanship Takes Priority

For the Sorters, if they were going to get beat out by Huntsville, they deflected the pain of losing by acknowledging an outstanding baseball play by Watkins.

Joey and Donna Sorters both basically told him the same thing, “Well, I really want to punch you right now, but at least it was you and not anyone else.”

“I love that family,” Watkins said.

Watkins’ older sister, Makayla, perseveres in her own personal journey processing the pain of losing close friend, Shelby Dotson, in a traffic accident at age 15 on Sept. 21, 2015, followed by the double whammy of saying goodbye to Jarren less than a year later.

“It still affects her to this day,” Watkins said, while describing a sibling rivalry that vanished as he helped her cope.

“Me and her we used to fight all the time and after that we’ve been tight as could be. You can’t find one of us without finding the other one unless she’s in college,” Watkins said.

“It’s hard losing somebody, actually two people like that as close as she was to both of them.”

Conference Brotherhood

Watkins has not forgotten teams in the 4A-1, including Prairie Grove and Farmington, which needed nine innings to get past the Eagles in Friday’s semifinals, who reached out while Huntsville walked through the loss of Dotson.

“Everybody in the 4A-1 is all family, all tight- knit really. All the coaches know each other. They’ll just talk all the time, but having Prairie Grove and like Farmington, them reach out to us, it was something else because my sister was very close to Shelby, as well. It was very nice, really,” Watkins said.

He said Huntsville coach Greg Harris wants the team to be a class act all the time, especially when knocking an opponent out of the postseason.

“That’s what Huntsville teaches, really. That’s what we’re all about. You got to play the game. That’s how it was taught for us,” Watkins said. “Coach Harris does a great job telling us how to [maintain sportsmanship], and seeing them [ Prairie Grove] get that taken away from them — just like I have in my football season, in my basketball season, it’s heartbreaking, but life goes on and it doesn’t wait for you, so you just got to make the best of it while it’s here.”