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Eastside begins coaching search
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A little less than a year after Eastside hired Brad Weir as baseball coach, the school is once again looking for someone to lead the Eagles on the diamond.

Brad Weir stepped down recently after one year as the Eastside baseball coach, in which he led the team to a 22-6 record and the state playoffs.

Weir was hired in July after coaching Wayne County the past three years, leading the Yellow Jackets to three straight Region 2-AAAAA championships. Weir was 78-17 while at Wayne County, and continued his winning ways at Eastside.

The second-seeded Eagles fell to Harlem 12-2 and 3-1 in the first round of the state playoffs, after putting together a nine-game winning streak.

Eastside lost just two region games during the 2012 season, falling 13-10 to Spalding and 13-3 to Stockbridge. The Eagles' only other two losses were to Houston County and Berrien.

It was the third straight playoff appearance for Eastside, a trend Principal Jeff Cher wants to continue with the hiring of a new coach.

"Eastside has been a successful program, so ideally we would look to find someone to take the program where it is and continue the success that it's been and probably even grow the program more so," Cher said.

The desire to keep Eastside winning helps narrow down the search field a little as Cher won't be looking for a new start to the program.

"It's not like we have a program that is just starting off and has low participation," Cher said. "We have great interest and great participation from our students and we have good parent support.

"So we think it's an attractive, lucrative position and hopefully we'll find the best person to continue that."

As Eastside starts its search, not only is it looking for a baseball coach but as per its philosophy, a teacher first.

Eastside has vacancies for a special education and a business education teacher.

Along with just those two openings, Eastside will also have to deal with the fact that they are looking for a teacher a little more than a month before the start of the 2012-13 school year.

Even though Weir was there for just one year, Eastside found a coach to continue its playoff tradition during its last coaching search and hope to do so again now.

"He did a fine job as far as the team still made the playoffs as they've done in previous years and we had a great regular season record," Cher said. "That's the kind of program we want to have, a successful program were kids are involved and performing well."