By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          The new Stratford athletics director?

          Played baseball for the old athletics director, at FPD.

          The new Stratford athletics director has had a career not too different than the old Stratford athletics director: a Macon private school prep career – and a stellar one, at that - and then decades in Central Georgia as a successful and respected coach and administrator.

          Longtime Jones County athletics director and former head baseball coach Barry Veal has been hired as Stratford’s full-time athletics director Mark Farriba, who resigned at the end of March, effective at the end of the school year, and left school at the start of April.

          Stratford head of school Logan Bowlds announced the hiring Friday late afternoon in an email to the school’s coaches, and others. Iain Jones will remain as interim athletics director through May.

          “I know that many of you know Barry who has been a coach and athletic director in Jones County for nearly three decades,” Bowlds wrote. “He brings a wealth of experience with him that I feel will help us bridge the gap and ensure a continued focus on excellence in athletics …

          “… Iain has been quick to understand what is ultimately best for Stratford at this point. We both feel that Barry is able to restore trust both in Stratford and within the athletic program.”

          Veal was a multi-sport star at FPD, racking up all-state in baseball and basketball. His single-season and single-game scoring record were broken only two years ago, by Jordan Jones, now at Veal’s college alma mater.

          Veal set baseball records for the Vikings in single-game strikeouts (18), while also playing outfield and some first base.

          His basketball jersey is retired, and he entered the Macon Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.

          A Georgia Tech basketball recruit, he chose that sport and baseball at Mercer, earning all-conference baseball honors twice in the mid-1980s.

          He shares the Bears’ program mark for steals in a season (30/1985), and was a teammate of current Mercer head coach Craig Gibson.

          Veal’s coaching career started after a stint in the Detroit Tigers organization, for a spring training. He then was hired as head baseball coach at John Milledge for three years, spent a year back at Mercer, and then was hired as Jones County’s head baseball coach starting with the 1993-94 school year.

          He and former softball coach Blake Lyons split assistant athletic director duties for several years while then-principal Chuck Gibson had the AD title.

          Veal is part of a supremely athletics-oriented family.

          Veal’s father Coot, born as Inman Veal, was a major-league baseball player for six years. He was the first Washington Senator to hit in that team’s old Griffith Stadium. He graduated from Lanier and was a college teammate at Auburn of Vince Dooley.

          Brother Brannen was a baseball standout at Tattnall and Middle Georgia Junior College, and then Auburn, getting drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers but choosing the business world.

          He is a recent inductee to the Macon Sports Hall of Fame.

          Brother Rick played at Lanier and Gulf Coast Community College in Florida before moving on from sports.

          Barry Veal handed the keys to the Greyhounds baseball field over to assistant Jason Page in June of 2014, after 21 years of leading the Jones County program.

          Veal was an assistant athletics director before taking it over upon resigning as head baseball coach, doing so with a career mark of 472-191, according to the Georgia Dugout Preview.

          The Greyhounds have enjoyed the most football success in the program’s history with Veal as AD, although he was still assistant AD when Justin Rogers was hired in 2014.

          From 2014-21, the Greyhounds have won at least 10 games five times, made the playoffs every year and won at least one postseason game in six of the eight seasons.

          Jones was appointed Stratford’s interim athletics director upon the departure of Farriba, who remains on contract through May but has left the school and handed duties to Jones. Jones will transition to an assistant AD role, Bowlds wrote, that will focus on the middle school programs and “alignment with upper school sports.”

          The school has a boys basketball head coaching vacancy.