Coy Baker

From 6-17-14

I retired 3 times for Jan and me to travel, and each time someone or something beckoned me back to teaching and coaching. There was only one job change that Jan objected to as she said,"that job was as close as I would ever come to duplicating our enjoyable years at Newton County And GWA. But, I'm getting ahead of a long story. A very persuasive and religious Dr. J.Y. Jones of Dublin, Georgia, convinced me to accept the challenge of making something out of their little school or helping to close it. I think a friend, Ron Riley had oversold him on me, as Dr. Jones said ,"he had prayed about it, and I was the man that they wanted. I have always loved a challenge, and I committed to a 5 year deal There was a very respected former coach and administrator that attended most of our Trinity practices named Bill Meeks and one day after practice he motioned for me to come to him. He said,"Bradley, you are near the end of your 5 years here and you need to go back to public school and after 3 years the State Retirement System will let you buy back your years so you and Jan will have a income in your later years. I went home and her first remark was," are you crazy?" Like magic, the next week a friend who was a Walton County Principal called, and wanted to know if I would consider coming back to North Georgia to coach. I had seen the Dublin school grow to around 400 students and I was aware that we liked to eat, and might need a retirement income one day. I drove in on a street named for a Coy Baker, and I was about to be challenged by him. After some preliminary conversation and expressing my salary needs, Mr. Baker, a member of the Walton County Board of Education, spoke up and said,"Before I die, I would like to see one good boys basketball team here at Loganville High School." I told them I needed a boys basketball account with a budget of $250, and any profit from tournament play needed to be put into our account. I could tell they were laughing at me and they realized that the team didn't play long enough to make a profit. They then shocked me when they told me they had only one winning boys basketball team in 32 years and that record was 13-12. Mr. Baker further said some people don't want a quality basketball program here, but as long as you don't break any school or GHSA rules you can do what you need to do to give us a winning program. Prior to our first practice I took the seniors out to a restaurant to eat and to challenge them for their support before we were to begin our summer workouts. One of the team leaders, Robbie Nash spoke up and asked,"are we going to be any good?" I told him if we worked and paid the price to be successful, we would win 20 plus games, and turn this program around. The guys sat there with wide eyes and seemingly deep in thought. I'll continue tomorrow with the second part of this long story.