By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

GULFPORT — The recent announcement of the vacant head baseball coaching opening at Gulfport High means that one of top jobs on the diamond in South Mississippi is available.

The question now is, who will fill the opening?

There are quite a few names being batted about in the beginning of the search.

The Admirals are looking for a new head coach after a three month saga came to an abrupt end Thursday morning when GHS Athletics Director Matt Walters confirmed to SouthMiss6 Sports that applications are now being taken for a new head coach to lead the baseball program.

That news comes three weeks after Walters told SouthMiss6 that “Justin Edwards is our head baseball coach” when asked about about the status of the job.

Edwards began his first year at the helm of the Admirals in February but in mid-March he took a leave of absence for personal reasons. He was replaced by assistant coach Kelly Weems, who finished out the season.

Automatically, two obvious candidates surfaced in the immediate hours after the announcement. Those being Weems and former Admiral assistant coach and current Pascagoula High head coach Colton Caver.

Weems was officially the “acting head coach” of the Admirals for the last two months of the season, being elevated from his role as pitching coach after the departure of Edwards

Caver spent four seasons at his alma mater Gulfport as an assistant under veteran head coach Jamie McMahon including helping lead GHS to the Class 6A state championship in 2023. The 2012 GHS graduate then left to take over the helm of the Panthers, where he has been the past two seasons.

Weems came to GHS replacing Caver. Prior to that, he spent 13 seasons at Harrison Central most as the pitching coach under both recent Red Rebel head coach Neil Frederic as well as longtime mentor Red Rebel Pat Olmi.

In addition to those two, other names mentioned in the rumor mill are current St. Martin head coach Kary Bridges along with a trio of former head coaches in the “Southern Six” in Anthony DeWitt, Sean Miller and Frederic.

However, Miller has landed at Biloxi as an assistant and DeWitt is apparently headed to Picayune in an assistant role as well according to some sources. While Frederic’s future is uncertain, he may well be interested in the opening as well or could land at GHS as an assistant under his former aide Weems if he lands the job.

Two other names that have surfaced are, like Caver, former Gulfport High standout players.

Ladd Rhodes is in his second stint as a Southern Miss assistant coach. He and the Golden Eagles were just eliminatedf from the NCAA Baseball Tournament earlier this week.

His responsibilities at Southern Miss includes hitting, outfielders as well as recruiting coordinator for the Golden Eagles.

He returned to Southern Miss in 2023 after spending two seasons at Nicholls State as hitting coach and recruiting coordinator, where the team made NCAA postseason play in 2023 for the first time since 1998.

Before joining up with the Colonels, Rhodes served on the Charleston Southern staff as an assistant coach throughout the 2021 season, and the year prior he acted as the volunteer assistant coach at Southern Miss for the 2020 campaign.

He also had a stint as an assistant at Jones Junior College for three seasons from 2016-19. He played at both Jones and Southeastern Louisiana after graduating from Gulfport in 2009.

In addition, Myles Gentry, who graduated at GHS with Caver in 2012, is currently the Director of Player Development at Samford University.

Gentry came to the Birmingham, Ala., program two years ago from Jones where he spent two stints on staff with the Bobcats from 2021-2023 and 2017-2019.

In between his first and second stints in Ellisville, Gentry worked as the pitching coach at Desoto Central High School.

He played collegiate baseball at Mississippi State University from 2012-17, including in 2013, a year that saw the Bulldogs finish national runner-up to UCLA in the College World Series.