Photo by Ron Burkett.
Chrissy Mauldin believes the picture tells a better story than an explanation of the magnitude of this moment with her husband, Jeff Mauldin.
Chrissy Mauldin stood on the field as a pack of Huskies, for lack of a better term, formed a dogpile on top of the pitching mound. She looked around once, then twice, trying to spot her husband, Jeff Mauldin.
“I couldn’t find him, and I remember standing out there, and they were like, ‘She can’t stay on the field,’” she said.
Hewitt-Trussville had just captured its first high school baseball state championship, and Chrissy Mauldin wanted to celebrate with her other half — the head coach of the baseball program.
“I did not realize he had dogpiled on the mound,” she said.
Once they found each other, they embraced.
“I could see the look in his face, and he saw the look in mine, and it was just such affirmation of what we do,” Chrissy Mauldin said.
What “they” do is influence a group of high schoolers every chance they get. To Chrissy Mauldin, the Hewitt-Trussville baseball program isn’t just her husband’s. She walks the journey alongside him. She’s there for the Bible studies at the Mauldin household. She’s there at every game, cheering on the team with unrelenting passion and unparalleled superstition.
She was there when her husband’s coaching career sent him to Clay-Chalkville Middle School and transitioned to Clay-Chalkville High School, where the Cougars won the state championship in 2003.
She was there when he took the job at Pelham High School in 2006, and there when he took the job at her alma mater four years ago. So, of course she was there for the state title run, where the Huskies swept Auburn May 20-21 in Montgomery.
The inner workings of the Hewitt-Trussville program are what she takes pride in. She focuses on what she can do for the players “outside the white chalk,” which she said is the biggest thing.
“Baseball’s going to end for them at some point,” Chrissy Mauldin said.
There is no doubt in her mind that her family is where it belongs.
“We feel like this is a calling. We feel like this is our mission field, so to speak. God gave him a gift to reach kids,” she said. “We feel like we wouldn’t be in God’s will if we weren’t with high school kids at this point in time working with them.”
Chrissy Mauldin knew before the state championship series the result would not define the players’ careers at Hewitt-Trussville. All the relationships that had been established, and the bond of a team that had been fostered through its coach and his wife, would last longer than any memory of a game.
But winning never hurts, and that’s what the Huskies did.
So that embrace on the mound was a moment for the two to celebrate what had been accomplished, together.
“We go through so many things together. We experience all of that together,” Chrissy Mauldin said. “To experience that joy together that way … the picture does a better job explaining it than trying to put it into words.”
