Jackets ready to start GHSA 5A playoffs
Satuday’s game with neighboring Sonoraville has been canceled
It has been an interesting past couple of weeks for the Calhoun High School baseball program.
But everyone needs to know right off the bat that the Yellow Jackets’ 2022 regular season ended Thursday night with a home doubleheader against Blessed Trinity. (Details of that game were not available at press time).
That’s because their re-re-rescheduled single game Saturday afternoon, April 23, against neighboring rival Sonoraville at The Furnace has been canceled entirely.
“We just felt like with everything that was going on, it was best to cancel that game,” Calhoun City Schools Athletic Director Brock Holley said.
And what’s been going on, besides there being no rematch
this year with Sonoraville is the Calhoun baseball program is also now under new management.
The cancellation came on the heels of a coaching change last week for the Yellow Jackets that has former assistant coach Greg Green currently running the team as interim manager after now-former head coach Beau Edwards left the team to start his new job as the athletic director at Ola High School.
“We’re so fortunate to have someone like Greg, who is a former principal at Calhoun High School and was an assistant (coach) on the 2000 state championship team to step in and help the baseball program out like this,” Holley said. “He’s one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around. And obviously very knowledgeable about the game. He worked with Coach (Chip) Henderson for a long time, so we’re fortunate to have Greg in a situation like this. And we know he’ll do a great job for us.”
Edwards, who became the Calhoun head baseball coach last spring after having been the manager at Ola High School for several years, made the surprising announcement nearly three weeks ago that he was leaving town after just one year on the job and it was determined at that time that he would continue to run the program until the end of the season.
But then the team started losing, including dropping a season-high five consecutive games to fall from the top of the Region 7-5A standings and out of the top 10 state rankings.
After that fifth consecutive loss — a disappointing 7-4 setback to Woodland last Tuesday — it was determined that the baseball program should move on and Edwards would be released to begin his new job at his old stomping grounds.
That put Green in the skipper’s chair and the team responded with a resounding sweep of Woodland last Friday, defeating the Wolves, 5-1, in Game One and then 13-2 by mercy rule in the nightcap to remain in third place in the league standings behind Cartersville and Blessed Trinity.
But they began this week with a 9-1 road loss Tuesday night against Blessed Trinity to fall to just 7-6 in the Region 7-5A standings with only two games left in the regular season.
That means Calhoun’s next stop is the GHSA 5A playoffs starting this Wednesday night in Decatur with a best-of-three series against the Bulldogs. The teams will play two games on Wednesday, starting at 4 p.m., and the third game, if necessary, would be back at Decatur Thursday with the winner moving on to the Sweet 16.
For Edwards, he said he loved the players he got to work with in Calhoun.
“That’s the thing that I will miss the most, working with those kids,” he said. “That’s why I took the job in the first place. I knew that Calhoun would have quality players and quality people that a coach would enjoy working with and being around every day and that’s what I will miss about Calhoun. You’re not going to find players that work harder and want to succeed more than the people that I’ve been in the dugout with the last couple of months.
“There’s a really solid young nucleus in place to build around and there’s a lot of young players that are only going to continue to get better. I’m sad that I won’t get to see that, but this is an opportunity for me and my family, that I felt I just couldn’t pass up.”
He said he knows a lot of people will question his being in town for just a short time.
“Like I said, this is an opportunity I felt I just couldn’t pass on,” Edwards said. “When the opening at Ola first came, it was a difficult decision on whether to apply for it or not. And I thought about not applying because
I had just came to Calhoun. But the more I thought about it and wavered on it, I just felt like it was something I had to apply for and I do feel very lucky I was able to get the (Ola AD) job.”
He said he had hoped when he told everyone about his leaving, the Yellow Jackets’ season would end in late May with the team in the mix for a 5A championship, like the football and basketball team before it.
Now the Yellow Jackets still have a chance to play for a championship, but it will be under the guidance of Green as the team gets ready to open the 5A state playoffs this week.
Regardless of how the twinbill went against Blessed Trinity, the Yellow Jackets will be the third seed out of Region 7-5A as they cannot catch either Cartersville or Blessed Trinity, which are above them, and they hold the tiebreakers over Cass and Woodland, the two teams below them in the league battling it out for the fourth and final playoff berth.
However, the Yellow Jackets definitely wanted to sweep the Titans or at least get a split because losing both games would give them a losing record in Region, which is not something no one envisioned when the season began in February.
It has indeed, been an interesting last couple of weeks of the Calhoun baseball program.
But now they have a chance to turn things around and finish strong under new management when they start the playoffs this week in Decatur.