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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

It was another crowded year atop the batting leaderboard in Shelby County as the best of the best slugged their way to success throughout the 2025 season.

The top was stacked with stars, including a duo of two-way players in Chelsea’s Aiden Hughes and Vincent’s Aiden Poe while the Jackets’ Grayson Gulde used big-time hits to make his name as one of the top hitters and Indian Springs’ Dylan Heald took the county batting title with a .537 average.

In the end though, the Shelby County Hitter of the Year award goes to an SEC-bound Thompson star for the second-straight year. After current Auburn star D’Marion Terrell took home the award in 2024, Alabama commit Wyatt Williams is the 2025 Shelby County Hitter of the Year.

In a tight race between the top five batters in the county, Williams earned an edge for his crucial hits during impactful games against the biggest schools in the state in Class 7A.

Williams led the county in five different categories–hits, RBI, home runs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage–while also ranking near the top in multiple other categories.

Despite heading to the plate 140 times, the most in the county, Williams still got on base at a .494 clip to lead all county batters while also turning in a .764 slugging percentage.

Even with that heavy workload, Williams came in a tie for second-highest batting average in the county at .450, finishing only behind Heald, who played in half the games as Williams did. Williams tied for second with Vincent’s Poe.

Williams made the most of his plate appearances, swinging and making contact to earn 63 hits across his 140 plate appearances. Of those hits, 20 were doubles, giving him the second-highest total in the area behind only his teammate Cooper Fuller, and he earned three triples as well.

In addition to those extra base hits though, he grabbed the county home run crown by sending six balls deep to give Thompson crucial run support throughout the season.

He also led the county with 68 RBI off those 63 hits, taking advantage of his spot in the lineup and his chances with runners on base to pile on the runs for the Warriors.

Williams picked his spots on the base paths well and finished a perfect 7-for-7 on stolen base attempts, one of the lower totals in the area but also one of the most efficient.

Williams was the complete package throughout the season, elevating Thompson’s offense in a challenging year for the Warriors that saw them take on some of the top teams throughout the Southeast and tangle with high-level foes in area play and the playoffs like Tuscaloosa County and Bob Jones.

He also made his case for Shelby County Pitcher of the Year, giving up one of the lowest run totals in the county at just 12 earned runs while finishing in third for strikeouts with 86, second in WHIP with 0.82 and fifth in ERA with a mark of 1.46 over the course of his 7-2 record.

While a worthy candidate for either award, Williams took on the best defenses in the state in Class 7A and still finished as one of the area’s best hitters, making him the best choice for Shelby County Hitter of the Year.