By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

HURLEY — The retirement of veteran East Central head baseball coach Bo Long has produced some glowing endorsements for the man that will do down as one of the most successful mentors on the diamond in the “Southern Six”.

Long announced he was stepping down from his post at the helm of the Hornets recently after 13 years as head coach and 12 more as an assistant in Hurley at his alma mater. He won right at 250 games and led ECHS to back-to-back Class 5A state championships in 2022 and 2023 and he is leaving a huge void in coaching circles all across South Mississippi.

During many of Long’s 12 full seasons leading ECHS his Hornets and George County waged war not only for region supremacy at times but in just friendly “neighboring” affairs as well.

“His teams always were prepared and played hard to the very last out,” Rebel head coach Brandon Davis, who is one of the only prep head baseball coaches in the “Southern Six” that has been on the job longer than Long has as a head coach. “Our teams had a very respectable rivalry. I also played college baseball at Perk with him and he was a great teammate.”

Davis has guided his Rebels to the state championship appearance five times over the past 1o years, including winning the Class 6A state title in 2024.

If it wasn’t GCHS and East Central battling it out for top honors in league action over the past dozen years or so it was the Hornets and Pascagoula.

Former Pascagoula head coach Richie Tillman, who led his team to the state title in 2012 and back to the state finals in 2021, also sang Long’s praises.

“Coach Long has had an extremely successful coaching career,” Tillman, who stepped down in 2023, said. “He’s always done things the right way, with class and respect for the game. He always seems to get the best out of his players and they compete at a high level. The game suffers when we lose coaches like him.”

Long comes from what many consider the “First Family” of baseball in Jackson County. After all, a Long has been at the helm of the Hornets for each of the past 48 seasons on the diamond and all three won state titles.

Rocky Long stepped down in 1996 after 18 years, having started the Hornet dynasty with a state championship in 1981 in his third year leading the program. Gary Long was a standout player on that title-winning team.

Rocky then became the AD and hired his cousin Gary Long to replace him, who had returned home to become his assistant a few years earlier. Rocky also remained as defensive coordinator in football and also served as the Hornet head football coach for a while.

Gary served as Hornet head coach for 16 seasons, winning the 2008 state title, and going 349-109 during that span. East Central won nine region titles and also played for the state championship in 1997 and 2009. He resigned as baseball coach in 2012 (but remained on as AD), so that he would have time to watch Ryne play at nearby South Alabama.

Ryne Long is now the head coach at Ocean Springs.

“Bo took over for me and has moved the program at East Central forward,” Gary Long said in a recent interview. “He moved forward by coaching smart, handling pitching well and getting a lot of players involved.”

The Hornets have only missed the state playoffs twice in the past 30 years, and have made the postseason for the past 16 seasons including every season under Bo Long.

Bo Long replaced his uncle Gary in 2013 after 12 years as his assistant coach. Bo played for Rocky Long as a head coach and while Gary was an assistant. He became the only one ever to win two state titles.

“Bo did a great job,” Ryne Long said. “He’s been so helpful to me not just since I started coaching but as a player as well. Everything about the program has continued to run at a high level since he took over, the success they’ve had under him speaks for itself. He’s an unbelievable baseball coach, but he’s an even better human being. You’ll never, ever get him to take any credit for all that he’s accomplished at East Central, that’s just the kind of guy he is. He’s had a huge impact on my life, more so than coaching or just basaeball is concerned. I’m just trying to continue the legacy they’ve built over the last 40 years and use what they’ve instilled in me to follow in their footsteps.”

In what was one of the most impressive spans in prep baseball ever in the “Southern Six”, Bo Long led the Hornets to six south state championship appearances in his 12 full seasons as the head coach at East Central.

His exploits and impact in prep baseball just weren’t noticed by his peers in the coaching profession either.

“I’ve known Bo and his family a long time.” veteran journalist Creg Stephenson, an award winning sports writer with The Alabama Media Group at Al.com and a graduate of ECHS, said. “His dad and my dad were old friends and his oldest sister, Kelley, was a year behind me in school. Bo is East Central baseball through and through. He played there, was an assistant there for more than a decade and then head coach for 13 years. All the wins and championships speak for themselves, but few people have devoted more of their life’s work to one place than Bo has to East Central.”

Going back to the 1960s, more than a dozen of the late Walter and Joyce Long’s descendants have played baseball for the Hornets and then went into the head coaching ranks in Jackson County.

“I’m sure a lot of communities like Hurley have similar families in different sports,” Stephenson concluded. “But for East Central baseball, it’s definitely the Longs. There’s no question about it.”

The success of the Longs on the diamond is unmatched by any other family in the long and storied baseball-rich history of Jackson County.