By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

            The Bibb County School District needed little time and no travel to determine its next county athletics director.

            Less than a month after it became public – in The Sports Report – that Barney Hester was retiring, the county named longtime Northeast boys basketball coach and athletics director Kevin Grooms as Hester’s successor on Thursday.

            Grooms has won multiple top AD awards in different regions, as well as Class AA state AD of the year and region and area basketball coach-of-the-year honors. He has been at Northeast since 2011, adding the title and duties of athletics director in 2017.

            He was an assistant football and basketball coach and head track coach at Central, in 2009-11, before moving to Northeast.

            Before that, he coached at three different middle and elementary schools in metro Atlanta. He has degrees from Fort Valley State, Jacksonville State, and Argosy University in Atlanta.