By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

His season and school duties on hold, Joey Hiller is staying busy.

“I got here at 8:30 this morning,” he said, “and have been on the phone or computer since. I haven’t eaten lunch.”

He would have been doing things anywhere during this period away from the field and classroom, but the Tattnall athletics director is in a full human-resources mode.

Tattnall is looking for a head football coach and head boys basketball head coach.

Hiller confirmed Wednesday afternoon that Chance Jones was out as head football coach and that there were some changes in basketball, with the retirement of head girls coach Casey Jones after a year and the transfer of Jeremy Mayweather from the boy’s team to the girls team.

Chance Jones, Tattnall
Year Overall     Region
2019 5-5              3-2
2018 6-5             5-0
2017 7-4              3-2
2016 12-1            5-0

Yes, the basketball situation is on hold while Hiller looks for a football coach. A resignation, dismissal, or mutual agreement?

“We’re calling it a mutual agreement,” said Hiller, estimating it became official on March 17.

Hired in February of 2016 from his offensive coordinator job at Prince Avenue Christian, Chance Jones was joined on the staff a few months after taking over by his father Ronnie, who had resigned as Westfield’s head coach, after 23 years, following the 2015 season.

Tattnall went 12-1, 7-4, 6-5, and 5-5 under Chance Jones, going to the GHSA Class A semifinal his first year but failing to make the postseason in 2019.

The next coach will be Tattnall’s third since Barney Hester resigned in January of 2013 to become head coach at Howard. Clint Morgan went 22-11 in three years and resigned under pressure, and now works with the GISA office.

Jones went 30-15 in four seasons, tying Morgan for the second-best winning percentage in Tattnall history at 66.7 percent, behind Hester’s 79 percent in 31 seasons.

Hiller said there is a yearly evaluation process for all coaches.

“There areas where Chance was improving, there were areas where he wasn’t,” Hiller said. “Right now, we needed to do some things for Tattnall football that would be in the best interest of Tattnall football and the school.

“It was nothing against Chance. Great guy, I like him a lot. But we’ve got to do what’s in the best interests of Tattnall football and the school.”

Hiccups the past two seasons: losing to Mount de Sales and Stratford in consecutive weeks in 2019, losing 55-0 in 2018’s Macon Touchdown Club Middle Georgia Kickoff Classic, failing to make the 2019 playoffs and losing two straight first-round playoff games.

Hiller said it wasn’t any one thing or any big thing, just the right time. He said he had about a dozen resumes for the football position and about three dozen for basketball.

Both jobs are listed on both state coaches and GISA websites. The only other Central Georgia coaching positions noted, on the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association site, is for an assistant girls basketball coach at Upson-Lee and head volleyball coach at FPD.

The move adds to another vacancy and very interesting storyline.

Westfield and Bruce Lane came to a mutual agreement to part – officially, Lane resigned - last month after one 3-9 season, replacing former assistant Jamey Watson, who was let go after three seasons (7-25) after taking over for Ronnie Jones.

That job is officially still open, with head baseball coach Rob Fitzpatrick having been named interim coach at the same time – a few days after The Sports Report’s story on Lane’s departure - Kevin Kinsler, a freshly-resigned head coach at Northside, joined the Hornets as an assistant coach and phys ed/weight training coach, with an official start date of April 1.

Any speculation about Kinsler’s addition – perhaps to run spring practice while Fitzpatrick coached baseball, and get a feel for the school? – became somewhat moot when all school and activities were put on indefinite hiatus nearly two weeks ago.

Speculation about Chance Jones returning to his alma mater – he was a standout player for his dad in the early 2000s – started, but he laughed that off when it was mentioned at the Macon Touchdown Club’s year-end jamboree on March 2.

Westfield names an interim football coach, adds ex-Northside boss Kinsler

Casey Jones picked at Tattnall

Tattnall hires Jeremy Mayweather

Hiller has almost three times as many resumes for basketball than football – the basketball job was posted earlier – but has football on the front burner.

“We’re paying attention to every job right now,” Hiller said. “Right now, football has taken top priority. We’re trying to knock down that before moving on to boys basketball just simply because we’ve got to get football in order first.”

Casey Jones, a longtime fixture in area high school basketball, was hired right at a year ago to succeed Todd Whetsel, who left to take over the Georgia Association of Private and Parochial Schools, then known as the GICAA.

He brought a resume of four decades, and stops at Tattnall, Stratford, Houston County, Central, and FPD, having thought he retired from FPD in 2018.

“We knew hiring Casey it was going to be a short stint,” Hiller said. “We didn’t know if it was going to be a year, two years, three years, but we knew. Casey, it was not a situation where we were getting rid of Casey. Casey came to us.

“There were some health things, and he didn’t feel like he could give the overall program – elementary, middle, and the high school - the attention it needed to get where it get where it needed to get.”

The Tattnall girls finished 7-16, and had only four seniors on the roster, according to MaxPreps. The boys went 6-16 in Mayweather’s first season.

He was hired last summer to replace Jarvis Smith, who went to East Jackson.

“He’s more familiar with coaching girls from coaching girls in college,” Hiller said of Mayweather, a record-setting men’s player at Georgia College who then spent a few years as a Bobcat women’s assistant. “Everything about the job for him was a better fit for him and his family. So we went ahead and made that move.”

Hiller expects to start narrowing the list of candidates for both jobs soon and is likely to eventually start conducting some phone interviews, since in-person meetings are pretty much out until further notice.

“We don’t have a time frame,” said Hiller, who was promoted from assistant AD 13 months ago to replace Whetsel. “We want to get in the right person for the football job and the boys basketball job.”