SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – After winning the school’s first state championship earlier this year, the Community Viqueens’ softball squad was honored with a custom plaque from the Bedford County Commission at Tuesday’s monthly meeting.

“We’re very thankful for everybody,” Viqueens’ Head Coach Cam Farrell said, “Both me and the girls have had so many people come up to us and tell us congratulations, but this was pretty cool. We’re appreciative and thankful for a lot of stuff that they [the County Commission] do that people don’t realize that they do as far as approving things and making sure we have things and stuff like that. Not everybody always agrees with them, but you can tell that they are for the kids. That was awesome. I think the girls were really proud of themselves, and I think it’s kind of sinking in for everybody now. It was a great experience.”

The Viqueens finished the year with a 35-9 record overall, finishing as Runners-Up in the District 9-AA Tournament before winning the Region 5-AA Tournament at Summertown the following week. Community continued its winning ways, finishing a perfect 4-0 at the TSSAA Class 2A State Tournament punctuated with a 10-1 win over Marion County in the title game on May 23rd at Shelbyville Central High School.

“It’s starting to sink in about now,” Farrell said, “That’s a lot of time. A lot of time away from home, a lot of time where my wife has to deal with me coaching, and we went the distance. It’s amazing to me because it was the first one in school history, first one in this county in softball, so a lot of that is starting to sink in. You can take a lot of stuff away from us, but you can’t ever take this away from us. It’s a lot of hard work. The kids miss out on a lot. We played 44 games, won 35 of them, played 60% of our games away from home, and we did all that while maintaining a 3.7 GPA as a team. That says a lot about those kids and how locked in they are.”

The Viqueens featured a high-powered lineup as well as possessing one of the best pitchers in the entire country in Annie Prince. Prince finished eighth in the country in wins with 28 on the season as well as 19th in the country with 334 strikeouts. 

For Tennessee leaderboards, Mattie Maxey finished 14th with 12 home runs while Prince was 15th in ERA at 1.29, third in strikeouts, and second in wins.

Community was led by nine seniors in 2026, and seven of them were able to attend. Two were unable due to illness.

“It means everything to see the [graduates] there,” said Farrell, “Usually once those seniors are gone, they are gone. They came back, and it was good to see them. Some of us went out to eat afterwards to talk and catch up, and it just kind of told me that in years to come this group will always share this and be able to chat about the good times, so that will be pretty cool.”

The Viqueens’ softball program looks forward to the 2027 season with tryouts to take place in August.