Ava Jay was hired as the Blue Hose's new assistant coach in the summer of 2023. A former athlete at nearby Coker University in Hartsville, Jay arrives in Clinton after a one-year assistantship at Louisburg College where she helped guide the NJCAA institution to a 63-win campaign in a single spring.
Asked about Jay’s hiring, Williams declared “We are very excited about the addition of Ava to our coaching staff. Her main focus will be on the outfielders as she will work with them on a daily basis. She will also assist in many other areas of the program.”
“She is enthusiastic, eager, and ready to start working with the team”, expressed Williams, Presbyterian’s winningest coach of the 15-year Division I era with 103 W’s.
A left-handed outfielder from Matthews, North Carolina, Jay followed up on a Southwestern 4A All-Conference nod during her prep career at David W. Butler High School with a four-year stint at Coker. Competing for the Cobras, she was apart of 81 total victories with a career batting average of .336 and a .411 on-base percentage.
Finding an increased role with each season, Jay found career-highs in hits (37), runs scored (27), triples (three), RBI (14), and walks (18) during her senior season in 2022. Three years prior, Ava’s Cobras appeared in the NCAA Division II Southeast Regionals behind a 31-19 mark.
Slugging .414 for her career, Jay mustered 82 hits, 53 runs, 13 extra-base swings, 24 runs batted in, 32 walks, and 10 stolen bases for good measure.
“I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to represent Presbyterian”, commented Jay. “To continue to be a part of the game that has been a catalyst for so many lessons and opportunities means the world to me. I look forward to being a Blue Hose and contributing to the team, staff, and program while also learning from Coach Williams' years of experience.”
Wasting no time transitioning from the playing ranks to coaching, Ava landed at Louisburg College for the 2023 season and helped direct the Hurricanes to a record-shattering campaign that included a remarkable 38-0 record in conference matchups.
Primarily developing outfielders and slappers, Jay witnessed a program that captured a 56-game winning streak spanning 81 days, good enough to grasp the #2 national seed in the NJCAA postseason. From there, Louisburg finished the spring with an appearance in the Final Four.
The Hurricanes never took a single L in March or April (28-0 in the former, 16-0 in the latter), collecting 29 shutouts on the year while conceding two scores or less a whopping 51 times.
Jay’s squad gathered three separate streaks of four shutouts in a row. Perhaps the most dominant stretch occurred in a three-day sequence in mid-March where Louisburg battled four schools in a 72-hour window and outscored them by a combined clip of 71-2.
The Hurricanes notched double digits in the runs column on 40 different dates, blasting through a historic set of 12 games in a row with a minimum of 10 scores. Over those meetings, they outgunned the other side by a total of 163-18.
Ava graduated from Coker University in May ’22 with a major in Psychology and a minor in Criminology.
