He didn’t grow up in Ware County, but Tony Yeomans has never been far from Gator country. The fourth-year head baseball coach at Ware County High School was a standout at Wayne County High School who later continued his success at Armstrong State College (now Armstrong Atlantic State University). After being inducted into Halls of Fame at both schools, Yeomans embarked on a coaching journey that has seen head coaching stops at two other area schools. Now in his 13th season at WCHS, he is paying forward baseball lessons he has learned.
“All my coaches were competitors and I’ve tried to put all of those into one,” says Yeomans. “Wade Odom, who was a professional player, was my head coach for two years in high school, and he was a really good teacher of the game. Mike Eckle was also my head coach and he was a fierce competitor. Mike never wanted to hear what you’re going to do, he wanted to see it. My coach at Armstrong was Joe Roberts, who retired as the all-time winningest coach in NCAA history. Joe was a numbers guy who always kept up with business and stats. And I worked as an assistant here at Ware County under James Conoly, who was very knowledgeable and very conscientious about safety and treating kids fairly.”
Yeomans played at Armstrong from 1981-1984 as a catcher, outfielder, and designated hitter. As a freshman, he hit eight homeruns, which then qualified not only as a season record, but a career record, in being named the team’s rookie of the year. The next year he set school marks for stolen bases and runs scored and earned NAIA All-District honors in leading the Pirates to a number eight finish in the NAIA polls. “The thing I did the best was that I had really good foot speed,” says Yeomans. “I was fast and went 36-for-37 in stolen bases my senior year.”
His collegiate swan song saw co-captain Yeomans earn All-District and All-Conference honors. He finished his career with a .325 average, 29 home runs, 176 runs batted in, and 83 stolen bases. He considered playing professionally and participated in several free agent camps before pursuing a career in the private sector. “I was going to make my career in the railroad,” he says. “I got a job in Savannah, but got laid off in the early 90s.”
When the railroad didn’t pan out long-term, Yeomans cashed in on his physical education degree. He got a job teaching and coaching at Brantley County High School, where he served as an assistant baseball and football coach before being tapped as head baseball coach in 1995, his fourth year at the school. He led the Herons to an 8-16 mark in his first and only season as the Herons skipper.
Long County High School w
as the next stop, and by 1999 Yeomans was a head coach again. He led the Blue Tide to a Final Four appearance and a region title en route to a 66-23 overall record. He was Region Coach of the Year in 2001. During those years, he also tutored Dustin McGowan, who was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the first round of the 2000 Major League Baseball Draft. McGowan, who has appeared in more than 100 MLB games since 2005, notched a career-best 12 wins in 2007 and is once again competing for a spot in the Blue Jays rotation this season “I guess my claim to fame is coaching McGowan,” says Yeomans. “He went from throwing 87 miles per hour to around 95 between his junior and senior years.”
Yeomans moved on to Ware County following the 2001 season and spent the better part of the next decade learning from one of the game’s greats in Conoly. In 2010, Conoly retired from coaching and passed the torch to Yeomans. The Gators went 9-12-1 during the 2011 campaign, their first under the new skipper. WCHS improved to 18-10 the following year and 16-10-1 last season, with playoff berths each time. His 2014 Gators took a 2-1 mark into the final week of February, with sights set on greater things to come.
“Tony has a good background in baseball and I have a lot of respect for him and his baseball knowledge,” says Conoly. “He is an extremely good hitting coach and a good disciplinarian. I used to do it all but when Tony came to work for me I turned hitting over to him. He is good at breaking down the fundamentals of hitting and gets a lot of bat speed out of the kids. He is good at helping them set up for certain pitches.”
Teams of particular note in Region 3-AAAAA are Richmond Hill, Effingham County, and Glynn Academy, according to Yeomans. Though WCHS lost three starters to graduation in 2013, he is confident Ware will compete this season. “If we can, we’ll hit and run or bunt,” says the Gator boss. “My first year here in 2011, I don’t think we bunted because we hi
t 40 homeruns…we played for the big inning. My second year we hit 17 homers, so we did more bunting and running and sacrificing. Last year we only hit two homeruns, but that’s when the new bat rule came into effect, so everybody’s total was down.”
A longtime football assistant, Yeomans coaches running backs on the WCHS ninth grade team in the fall. He previously served as head football coach at Ware Middle School, where he was the school’s first-ever athletic director. He also coached the baseball and wrestling teams for five years at WMS and taught there for 10 years. Yeomans, who has a Master’s degree through Troy, additionally taught two years at Center Elementary School. This is his first year at Waycross Middle School, where he teaches health and physical education. He is married to the former Suzanne Hickox of Hoboken and they have four teenaged children: Dustin, Grayson, Tristan, and Mason. They are members of Hoboken Baptist Church.
This season Yeomans is ably assisted by coaches Joseph Hayman and Larry Turner on the varsity. Jason Smith and Drew Shealy coach the junior varsity. “We preach the little things, but if it’s one word, it’s execution,” says Yeomans. “We do all our fussing during practice, but our kids know what to do in the games because they are taught that in practice. I feel like you need to put a product on the field to compete and my job is to put us in a position to win the game.”
SE-CC-3.14-Yeomans
Coach’s Corner/Southeast/March, 2014
Tony Yeomans
Ware County High School
Waycross, Georgia
Story by John DuPont
Photography by Bo Carter
Right at Home
