Social Circle baseball has its next head coach, and he just happens to already be the coach of one of the school’s other top programs.

Chris Davis, the school’s softball coach since 2022, has been named to lead the baseball program after the departure of Kevin Dawkins.

Not too long after the announcement of Dawkins’ resignation, the program held a team meeting in which Davis was named as the next head coach.

“We had a meeting and told them that essentially I would be taking over,” Davis said. “Right now being in the summer, a lot of them are doing travel ball so they are off playing. We will get together a few times here and there throughout the summer to have a few workouts at the school. Things that we have done in the past, we are keeping things as they have been in terms of our schedule and getting together when there is availability.”

Although he now has two perennial playoff teams on his plate, this is nothing new for Davis.

“I did have to think about it. The one thing is that they are in different seasons and I have been doing softball here long enough, but I have done baseball and softball my whole life,” Davis said. “Many folks don’t know that this will be my 18th year doing high school baseball, and that’s where I started before I even got into softball.”

Davis graduated from Salem High School in 1996 before playing college baseball at Truett McConnell University. After transferring to the University of Georgia and earning his bachelor's degree in health/physical education, Davis moved into coaching. 

Davis returned to Salem, where he coached both the softball and baseball teams for 10 seasons. After one season as the softball coach at Ola, Davis had a long tenure as the coach of Locust Grove’s softball team as well as the baseball team.

“I coached softball and baseball at the same time at Salem,” Davis said. “I was the head baseball coach there and then I coached softball and baseball together at Locust Grove for a little while. I did stop eventually coaching baseball but that was as much of having three young kids and they outnumbered you at home and they needed to be in places. I just got pulled in too many directions.”

In 2022, Davis became the coach for Social Circle softball.

Since Davis joined the program, the Lady Redskins have eclipsed the 20-win mark every year that included a pair of 26-win seasons. Last year, Davis captured his first region title as the team’s head coach.

With a combination of baseball experience and success on the softball diamond, Davis is more than familiar with managing both teams.

“I pretty much already know how the schedules work. There is offseason stuff for baseball that will happen during softball season and there is offseason stuff for softball that will happen during baseball season,” Davis said. “The fact that I have done those and have an idea of what needs to be done, that will make it manageable. If I was starting out on either side, it would have been really tough and may not be something I would have wanted to do. I have enough experience that I believe I will be able to handle the load.”

Davis will take over a Redskins' baseball team that just came off its highest win total in program history.

Social Circle went 30-4 this past year, but fell in just the second round to Vidalia in a two-game sweep at home.

A big part of the success for the Redskins last season was a trio of senior pitchers that bolstered the team’s lineup. Seniors Caden Richardson, Gehrig Knapp and Cooper Duncan all held earned run averages south of 3.00.

Even with the loss of a solid rotation, Davis discussed how there is still a variety of solid pitching in the room that has just not seen many innings yet.

“We had quite a bit of pitchers who didn’t get quality innings because we had those three seniors. Those three seniors did an outstanding job all year,” Davis said. “I look at Garrett Brooks — he had some quality innings last year and he will be counted on. Zach Smallwood, Ian Miller and even Brayden Allen. He[Allen] did some of the closing last year. I think we will have arms, They will just be counted on more this year.”

Even with the youth on the team, Davis believes the team possesses the talent to replicate the recent success.

“We have a great core coming back,” Davis said. “We lost a good group of seniors, but we have a great core of sophomores this year. A great core of upcoming seniors. The numbers won’t be huge with the upcoming senior class, but they [are] players that were starters the last two years, so they are going to be three-years starters next year. The upcoming 11th grade class, a lot of those guys were playing last year as starters or key people off the bench. We will be young in a lot of ways, but we have a lot of guys who are returning with experience.”

While softball is the first priority at the moment, Davis shed light on what the offseason will look like for him and the baseball team.

“We will start once the fall gets here doing workouts and having our four-on-ones,” Davis said. “This summer we are doing times with pitchers, time with catchers and more individualized stuff with those guys . It will really get off more when the fall hits.”