By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

The new head baseball coach at Vancleave High will be an old familiar face.
Sources close to the situation have indicated to SouthMiss6 Sports that Zac Haarala is the choice of school administration to become the new leader of the Bulldogs. Haarala, a 2011 VHS graduate, has been an assistant under former Bulldog head coach Justin Edwards for the past three seasons.
Haarala must be approved by the Jackson County School Board at its next meeting, which is set for next Monday, July 15th.
Edwards and Haarala helped guide Vancleave to the Class 5A state championship in late May slipping past Lafayette in three games at Trustmark Park in Pearl to bring home the second state title for the Bulldogs in six years.
And just like then, after the 2018 season when VHS won the Class 4A state championship, the team suddenly found themselves in need of a head coach. Several weeks after winning the crown, Edwards took the head coaching job at Class 7A Gulfport.

Both Haarala and Edwards served time as assistant coaches at one point under veteran head coach Jamie McMahon at Gulfport.
Haarala was a four year starter behind the plate for Vancleave from 2008-2011. After a standout career with the Bulldogs, he moved on to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to continue his playing career with yet another band of Bulldogs and found success there as well.
A 2016 graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, he coached at Gulfport from 2017-2021 helping the Admirals to an appearance in the Class 6A state championship series as well as the South State championship series in 2018.

Edwards, a Gulfport native, led the Bulldogs to a 29-7 mark this past season. Edwards guided Vancleave to six consecutive South State playoff appearances during his tenure while most of the time having to battle it out with arch-rival East Central in region play.
Vancleave was able to dethrone the Hornets this season atop Region 4-5A after the Hornets had claimed back-to-back Class 5A state championships the past two seasons. The Bulldogs eliminated East Central in three games in the Class 5A South State semifinal round.
He replaced Daniel Best, which left VHS for Brandon High just after VHS won that state title in 2018 and ironically enough Best just guided his BHS Bulldogs to the first-ever Class 7A state championship this past season as well.