Help wanted, X 3: McLendon moving on from ACE as athletics director, baseball and softball head coach
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
One of ACE Charter’s OGs – original Gryphons – is moving on.
Josh McLendon, part of ACE’s athletics program since it formed a few years after the school’s opening, is moving on.
He said that he and principal Lara Relyea met recently and agreed it was time.
“She and I talked several times throughout the year,” McLendon said. “So it wouldn't it wouldn't be unusual for us to get together and meet or talk.
“It was kind of one of those things where it felt like it was time for me to make a change.”
The school posted the athletics director opening on its website last Monday, but the post has been pulled.
McLendon was hired by founder Laura Perkins and then-athletics director Jim Waite, initially just as the baseball coach. Waite left a year into the full varsity program’s development, and McLendon became athletics director as well as head softball coach.
Perkins retired at the end of the 2023-24 school year.
McLendon and his wife Julie - a teacher at ACE who had already alerted the school of her plans to change jobs – talked for months about the possibility of a move.
“We kind of just felt like as a family, it was time for us to kind of to start a new chapter, so to speak,” he said. “It's one of those things where you feel like God kind of kind of gives you a little nudge and kind of lets you know that it's time to move on and time to do something different.”
McLendon has applied for assorted jobs, and expects to have something official soon regarding his next step.
Under McLendon, ACE hired Keith Hatcher to take over the football team and Todd Whetsel to lead girls basketball. McLendon thinks soccer coach Robby Jones is the only other original Gryphon head coach.
There has been some transition in other sports, not unusual for any fledging athletics program, perhaps moreso with the unique setup at ACE compared to private and public schools.
But ACE is a solid playoff program now, for example, in football, girls basketball, baseball, softball, girls and boys soccer, and volleyball,with tennis and golf improving, and it has had several point-scorers in state track and cross country.
The Gryphons baseball team is 18-11 entering this week’s GHSA Class A/Division I playoffs.
The baseball team has gone 122-61 and softball 184-47 under McClendon. The softball team has made the Sweet 16 every year – including two years in Class AA – and went 31-0 for the 2021 state championship, taking third a year later in AA.
Both have made the playoffs in every season of existence, baseball earning a Final Four spot in 2021
It was in his second year as AD, 2018-19, that ACE began official GHSA region play in the sports it supported at the time. It has expanded regularly since then, and is building a second gym/multi-purpose building next to the gym.
McLendon was the athletics director of the year for Region 7-A Public in 2020-21.
The Central Fellowship grad earned a spot on Mercer’s baseball roster, but arm problems changed his plans, and graduated from Georgia College.
His coaching career began at Monroe Academy, and then he went to Central Fellowship until joining the ACE staff. His overall baseball record is 278-180 and softball is 293-123.
Son Jake is a senior at ACE and starter on the baseball team, and softball-playing daughter Jaymi Kate is a sophomore, daughter Jillian is in third grade.
McLendon’s focus is ending the baseball season in style. ACE is one of six teams from Region 2-A/Division I to make the playoffs, and the Gryphons barely missed out in the rankings to host the first-round series.
So he’s hoping to extend his ACE days as long as possible.
“It’s bittersweet,” he said. “Myself and my family, we made a lot of great memories here in my eight years at ACE. It was a heck of a run. Sad to go, but excited for the next chapter.”