By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

Yet another baseball season gets going this week across the state of Mississippi.

And the campaign, which officially gets underway Monday, will see seven new head coaches spread across the “Southern Six”.

And one of those is a longtime and familar face to prep baseball fans across the Gulf Coast.

Former Pearl River Central head coach Neil Walther is the new top bird at Hancock High. Walther was one of the most successful mentors in the “Southern Six” for 17 seasons during his time in Carriere before he was relieved of his duties unceremoniously mid-season in 2024.

He spent last season as the top assistant at Oxford before taking over the helm of the Hawks earlier this season.

Walther spent almost 17 seasons in Carriere, and was the most successful head coach in any sport, by far, at Pearl River Central High School. Since the 2008 season, he compiled an impressive 329-169 record while winning seven district titles with 15 straight playoff appearances, three trips to the South State finals and a state title.

Walther led the Blue Devils to the Class 5A state title in 2017, which still stands as the only state championship in a team sport in school history. The Blue Devils, ironically enough, knocked off Oxford in three games in the title series.

All of the other half-dozen new guys on the job on the baseball diuamond are truly “new guys”, with almost no prior head coaching experience on this level in this state.

Including Walther, all three baseball head coaches in Hancock County are new as Justin Barna at Bay and Irby Dossett at St. Stanislaus are included in that count.

Barna was a longtime assistant at Harrison Central, while Dossett takes over a top his alma mater after serving as a recent assistant with the Rocks.

Barna, a graduate of Harrison Central, spent the past seven seasons as an assistant coach at his alma mater under recent Red Rebel mentor Neil Frederic. The pair helped lead the Red Rebels to the state playoffs five times.

He was a member of the Red Rebel squad in 2013 that won the Class 6A South State championship and fell in the state finals to Southaven along with Bobby Bradley and Derrick Mount among others

Dossett, a 2014 graduate of Saint Stanislaus, has been a member of the Saint Stanislaus coaching staff since 2020, serving as assistant varsity coach for the past five years. He was a part of then head coach Brad Corley’s staff that helped guide the Rock-A-Chaws to the 2023 Class 3A State Championship round.

In Harrison County, yet another former prep stand out returns home to take over at his alma mater and Myles Gentry is the new head coach at Gulfport. He comes from Samford University where he was an assistant coach there.

Gentry, a 2012 GHS grad, becomes the first GHS alumnus to lead the baseball team in at least 60 years, in the “modern day” era, since integration in 1970. After his playing days with the Admirals, he went on to play in the College QWorld Series as a player at Mississippi State.

Also in the same county, Jeff Kovacevich is the new head coach at Harrison Central. He comes to Lyman from just up U.S. Highway 49 in Wiggins, where he served as an assistant under Sean Miller for the past three seasons at Stone High.

A graduate of D’Ibervlle High and a key player for the Warriors back in the late 2000’s, Kovacevich went on to play at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College as well.  Although he has prior head coaching experience in Florida, this will mark his first head baseball coaching stint in South Mississippi. He does bring with him over 15 years of coaching experience at multiple competitive levels.

In 2016, Kovacevich led Cypress Creek High of Orlando, Fla., to its first district crown in 15 years. He landed at Stone because he was already connected to Miller, as the two coached together at Ocean Springs some years back.

Speaking of Stone, Adam Dyess is the new head baseball coach for the Tomcats.

Dyes comes to the Tomcats from Mize High School, where he was the leader of the Bulldogs on the diamond for several seasons up until 2024 before taking last year off.

He guided Mize to a 20-10 mark in 2024 and into the second round of the Class 2A South State playoffs. In 2023, the Bulldogs went 26-6 under Dyess and won Region 8-2A and also moved into the Class 2A South State quarterfinals.

Dyess is a graduate of Sumrall High School where he was a standout on the diamond for the Bobcats in the mid 2000’s.

He replaces Sean Miller as the helm of the Tomcats. Miller is now an assistant coach at Biloxi.

Over in Jackson County, East Central has a new head baseball coach not named Long for the first time in almost 50 years.

Longtime Hornet assistant coach Stephen Garrard is the new Hornets head coach.

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.