By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

             Scott Lamb has been a year-round softball dad for years, and a summer softball coach for awhile.

            Now, he gets to be a high school softball coach, and he’s pretty amped.

            Lamb will give up his football assistant duties at Houston County and take over as the Bears’ head softball head coach, the team announced Monday on Twitter.

            He’ll be the Bears’ third head coach in three years.

            Angela Crawford stepped down after the 2017 season with seven region championships, four Final Four trips, and a 273-115 record, building one of the top programs in the state’s highest classification.

            Lee Kicklighter came in after five seasons and 113 wins at Union Grove, and the Bears were back in Columbus for the championship tournament, going 1-2.

            Lamb said Kicklighter decided recently that between his drive from Monroe County and his wife’s job in McDonough that the travel issues had become too disruptive family-wise, and he wanted to step down, and ostensibly take a position at Mary Persons.

            Thus, there was an opening to coach the Bears, a perennial playoff team, and one Rylee Lamb, the third of Lamb’s softball-playing daughters, for her senior year.

            “It really just worked out, good timing for me,” the 52-year-old Statesboro native said. “I’m excited.”

            Lamb’s high school coaching background has been in football and baseball, including an 82-34 record at Warner Robins from 2000-04 during more than a dozen years at the school.

            He then was a football assistant and golf coach at Veterans from 2010-17 before moving across county to Houston County.

            But he has travel softball experience, courtesy of Rylee, Avery (a junior pitcher at Valdosta State), and Lauren (who played in high school at Elbert County, where Lamb’s coaching career began).

            Lamb spent three years in the insurance business after three years at Elbert County, where he coached with recent Georgia Sports Hall of Fame inductee T. McFerrin, and was baseball coach for two years. His first days as a coach on any level were as student assistant at Lincoln County under legendary head football coach Larry Campbell.

            “We won the state, and Garrison Hearst was my first coaching assignment,” said Lamb, who played baseball at Middle Georgia (Junior) College and Truett-McConnell. “(Campbell) let me coach some running backs that year. I didn’t have to do a whole lot of coaching.”

            Lamb has given up his football duties, since the two sports share a season, and head football coach/athletics director Ryan Crawford has made some quick moves on the staff, thanks in part to teaching roles working out.

            “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Lamb said, of coaching softball. “It didn’t cross my mind until my girls started playing it. Three girls later, I got into this softball thing and traveled all over the world.

            “I’ve learned a lot. I have a baseball background, and that helps. It’s a different game. Softball’s a little faster.

            “It’s just great timing for me, something I’ve always wanted to do.”