By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

HURLEY — Longtime East Central assistant baseball coach Stephen Garrard is expected to be named the new Hornets head coach. SouthMiss6 Sports has learned.
Garrard was expected to be approved by the Jackson County School Board for the position at its monthly meeting late Monday afternoon. An official announcement is expected to come on Tuesday.
He is set to replace his old boss, veteran ECHS head coach Bo Long. Long stepped away from the helm of his Hornets and his alma mater after 25 years on the staff, including the last 13 as the leader. He led ECHS to back-to-back Class 5A state championships in 2022 and 2023, and won almost 250 games during his time atop the program.
Garrard served as the Hornets’ pitching coach for the past decade and has been on the ECHS staff for about 15 years. He is well respected for his work by both fellow assistants and head coaches throughout the “Southern Six” and has earned a reputation as a solid baseball coach.

He was right in the thick of things leading the Hornet hurlers during that consecutive state title run several years ago. He has also served as a football assistant coach at ECHS for quite some time as well.

Garrard is a native of South Alabama and was a standout baseball player at Alma Bryant High School. He was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame at Alma Bryant in 2022. He also played baseball at The University of Mobile.
Garrard’s hiring brings and end to an almost five decade stretch in which a member of the long family has been the head baseball coach at ECHS. A trio of Long’s, Rocky, Gary and Bo, have served in that post for the last 48 seasons. The last head baseball coach at ECHS without the last name of Long was Ed Carnley in 1977.
Since then, that trio of Longs has helped guide the Hornets to four state championships overall and established the Hornets as a perennial state power on the diamond for most of the past 20 years.
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 Long took over and served as Hornet head coach for the next 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.
He gave way to Bo, his nephew, in 2013. Bo Long became the only ECHS head coach in any sport in the history of the school to win two state titles during his tenure.
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. In fact, in one of the most impressive spans in the “Southern Six” in the past 50 years he led ECHS to six Class 5A South State championship appearances in 12 full seasons as head coach.