Dual Sport Spotlight: Pascagoula’s Keilon Parnell and Gautier’s Kaden Irving

Kaden Irving goes to Gautier High School with plans to go to Ole Miss. Keilon Parnell goes to Pascagoula High School with plans to go to Mississippi State.

Region 8 Class 5A rivals turned future SEC West rivals, but that doesn’t mean they can’t share the same batting cage or share the same spotlight or even share a close friendship.

“Yeah, we’ve been friends for quite a bit. I remember our eight-year-old, we ended up going to the World Series and winning it all.” Keilon Parnell and Kaden Irving weren’t always in opposing dugouts. In fact, they still play together as part of the SBG Sox Prime class of 2023 high school showcase team.

They also made the trip to Marietta, Georgia earlier this month to take part in the Perfect Game Junior National Showcase alongside 300 or so of the nation’s top prospects. Parnell said, “It was a big deal. We met a lot of Top 10 prospects in the nation. So, you see them play, and you’re like, oh, I need to tweak this. So, when you go there and see all those scouts there, I’m like okay, I’m at this point already in my life so I’ve got to grow up quick.”

Keilon says his 6.7 60-yard dash time really stood out, as well as his batting practice session.

As for Kaden, he broke the event’s all-time record for exit velocity with 102 miles per hour off a wooden bat. “The second game I had a triple and it was one of the loudest hit balls I’ve ever hit in my life, and then only thing you just hear is ‘wow.’ It was crazy. Like people knew I was always strong, but I think whenever that happened, everybody opened their eyes a lot more.”

As a varsity contributor since the eighth grade, Kaden’s power has never been in question, accounting for eight of Gautier’s nine home runs during his sophomore season alone.

Right across the Singing River, Keilon led Pascagoula in hits en route to the program’s first state championship appearance in eight years.

Both wildly successful in their own right in both baseball and football. “I think we’re different as how body wise or like power wise. He’s more power, I’m more speed. He’s more of a Patty Mahomes, I’m more Lamar, you know?”

“I’m the guy that’s going to get up there and any given swing I could hit one out, he’s just, he brings so much energy to the game, I mean momentum changer. He could hit a triple and even if they’re down five runs, it’ll turn the whole game around. Football, I’m just going to sit in the pocket and pass. I’ll run if I need to, but I depend on my arm a lot more. And he uses his legs, I mean that’s God’s gift right there.”

In the immediate future, baseball takes a backseat to their respective junior football seasons, soon to be featured on News 25’s 25 Teams in 25 Days.

In the more long-term future, Kaden is still solid on the Rebels after Head Coach Mike Bianco’s recent four-year contract extension. “I fell in love with Mike Bianco, and the powder blues, you can’t really beat that.”

Meanwhile, Keilon couldn’t be happier about his OmaDawgs being just three wins away from their first ever national championship at the College World Series. “I feel like we’re going to make it all the way, I feel like we’re going to win it, especially by the first game that we just played.”

As of now, dreams of playing together at the next level are just that, even though they’ll never have to go too far to find their names in the same sentence or even in the same local news story. “I think the biggest thing is a lot of people try to make it a competition between me and him, but we never look at it as that. We’re always trying to make each other better.”

“I see him do one thing. I’ll be like okay; I want to do this too. I want to be like him. I want to do that to. But we don’t really compare each other that much to each other. But like he said, other people compare us way more than they should because we don’t see it like that.”

Ocean Springs’ Bray Hubbard, a dual-sport athlete and Southern Miss baseball commit, plays on the same SBG Sox Prime team as Keilon and Kaden, but had a scheduling conflict the day of the shoot.

St. Stanislaus newcomer Seth Farni also went to junior nationals.