By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Jesse Hicks has been a head football coach in Georgia since 2002, at Baldwin, Dougherty, Central, and Baldwin.

          He has had six losing seasons, and has gone 133-108, with 15 trips to the playoffs.

          In its history, dating back to 1962, East Laurens the same span, East Laurens has won 222 games, with one region title and one 10-win season, and 10 trips to the state playoffs.

          Now, they’re together.

          East Laurens announced at the Laurens County Board of Education meeting Thursday night that it had hired the longtime Central Georgia coaching staple.

          He is the program’s eighth coach since 2000.

          While Hicks was winning 55.2 percent of his games in 22 seasons, East Laurens was struggling through a 76-168-2, mark, 31.2 percent. Only one Falcons head coach with more than one season has a winning record. Buddy Sorrow went 61-45 in 10 seasons, from 1994-2002 and in 2015.

          East Laurens released Bin Turner from his coaching role earlier this month. He went 15-46 in six seasons, two playoff trips and a 6-5 mark in 2021 that was followed by 1-9, the program’s seventh one-win season this century.

          Hicks was let go by Baldwin on Nov. 16, after going 110-60 in 15 seasons covering two stints with the Braves, including three region titles but only three trips past the second round of the playoffs. Baldwin went 40-36 in his second try,

          It wasn’t a popular decision, the announcement coming in the morning and leading to some disruption by students. An online petition to keep Hicks was started.

          Baldwin hasn’t hired a replacement.

          East Laurens had 11 players make the first and second all-region teams in GHSA Region 2-A/Division I, with four underclassmen. The school’s campus has gone through major changes and upgrades in recent years, and Hicks steps in to a situation with substantially improved facilities.

“I think they have the talent,” Hicks said in an interview with 41NBC’s Tucker Sargent. “I think they have some good kids. The east side is something that needs to be rebirthed, needs to be reborn, needs some life blood pumped back into it, and I think I’m just the man to do it.”