Clarke Central High School head varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner poses inside A.B. Weathersby Field on March 6. Boatner has had a difficult start to his CCHS coaching tenure, with no wins in his first eight games, but he believes hard work will help his team improve. “We never miss practice and I think that’s an important part of our philosophy is everybody’s got the desire to win,” Boatner said. “We’re looking for people with the desire to practice to win. And that’s the key.” Photo by Lucas Donnelly
After coaching in Mississippi for over 40 years, CCHS head varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner has brought his hard-working personality to Athens.
Above all else, Jerry Boatner knows two things: hard work and baseball.
The new Clarke Central High School head varsity baseball coach came to Athens as a 77-year-old high school coaching icon with a mountain of accolades from his time in Mississippi, aiming to right an ailing CCHS program.
But in reality, Boatner’s time on the diamond stretches back before CCHS, before his trophies and championships, even before he coached his first game. Rather, Boatner’s baseball journey started in his parents’ backyard in Meridian, Mississippi, with a world of baseball ahead of him.
As a kid in Mississippi, Boatner didn’t always have the best relationship with his parents, but that didn’t stop them from being a huge influence on his life and coaching career. In particular, his father taught Boatner the importance of hard work and politeness.
“(My daddy) made me say, ‘Yes, sir (and) no, sir.’ We had to wear our shirttails in, wear our socks. If he told us to go get something, we had to run to do it,” Boatner said. “The older I got, I realized (that) my daddy was just what I needed.”
A juxtaposition compares Clarke Central High School varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner as a player with Boatner decades later in his 55th year coaching. Boatner’s biggest influence in the baseball world was former Major League Baseball player and Delta State University pitching coach Dave “Boo” Ferriss, who taught Boatner the value of affecting student-athletes both on and off the field. “ The older I become, the more important I see the value of impacting people’s lives when in early years, I’d be climbing the ladder of success,” Boatner said. “My prayer every day (is) that I have just half the influence on these kids that Coach Ferriss had on my life.” Photos courtesy of Jerry Boatner and by Lucas Donnelly
Boatner played baseball growing up, attending East Mississippi Community College before moving on to Delta State University as a pitcher. There, Boatner met Delta State pitching coach Dave “Boo” Ferriss, a former Major League Baseball pitcher and the man who would become like a second father to Boatner.
With Boatner aiming for the pros, Ferriss taught him about baseball and life in the big leagues. But, when Boatner injured his arm in an incident that would ultimately end his professional baseball dreams, Ferriss’s emphasis on commitment became all the more important to him as a coach.
“My prayer every day (is) that I have just half the influence on these kids that Coach Ferriss had on my life,” Boatner said.
After graduating from college, Boatner had to make a decision: would he pursue his baseball dreams from the sidelines or make a career out of something else?
He opted for the former, taking the position of head baseball coach at Clarkdale High School, a program that hadn’t won a game in five years. But after a summer of training, Boatner’s team came out and won their very first game against local rival Northeast Lauderdale High School.
“I got all excited (and) pumped up, jumping up and down, players jumping up and down, the fans (doing the same),” Boatner said. “I got on a baseball high 55 years ago and I’ve been on one ever since. I can’t come down.”
Boatner coached at Clarkdale from 1969-1973 before moving on to West Lauderdale High School on the other side of Meridian in Collinsville. Just as with Clarkdale, Boatner inherited a losing program: two years before Boatner arrived, the Mighty Knights hadn’t had enough players to finish out their season.
Little did Boatner know that he would remain at West Lauderdale for the best part of 40 years, leading his team to 14 state championships while collecting innumerable national honors including being named the National Coach of the Year by “USA Today” in 2007. But Boatner wasn’t teaching anything special – just the importance of hard work that he’d learned from Ferriss and his father all those years before.
A timeline displays Clarke Central High School varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner’s playing and coaching history. After Boatner’s first wife passed away in 2007, he married his old middle school sweetheart, and the pair eventually moved to Georgia together. “We lived (in Meridian, Mississippi) for 10 years, (but) she wanted to come and watch her (grandson) play ball,” Boatner said. “I didn’t want to lead Marines because I had the best job in the world, had great success, security, (everything). I didn’t make the most money, but I was happy. But, (moving) was only the right thing to do.” Timeline by Wyatt Meyer
West Lauderdale Athletic Director and assistant varsity baseball coach Jody Hurst attended West Lauderdale in the 1980s, playing for Boatner. While he returned to the school later, Hurst admitted that Boatner’s coaching style was a learning curve.
“I had to realize that at first, (his coaching style is) a little different, it’s a little bit ‘Oooh, okay,’” Hurst said. “But then, you realize that he’s (being tough) for you, he’s doing it to try and make you the best person off the field as well as on the field.”
When the dust settled in 2014, Boatner had amassed the most wins of any baseball coach in the state of Mississippi, which would eventually lead to him being inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.
Even then, Boatner wasn’t done coaching. In fact, the only reason he left Meridian was because of a chance encounter with an old high school sweetheart at Meridian Senior High School’s 45th class reunion after his first wife passed away in 2007.
“(The reunion) cost $100, (but I’d) made up my mind (that) I wasn’t coming. But after she called, I changed my mind and said, ‘I’m gonna go,’” Boatner said. “To make a long story short, we got married three months later and she’d been a gift from the Good Lord.”
After their marriage, the pair remained in Meridian for several years so Boatner could continue to coach at West Lauderdale. But eventually, the pair moved to Braselton, Georgia, so they could see his wife’s grandchildren grow up. Once in Georgia, Boatner returned to the baseball field in an assistant coaching capacity at West Jackson Middle School. But after three years, Boatner wanted a change, a return to the big time: he wanted a head coaching position.
“Some of the travel ball parents (on my grandson’s team) knew that I had coached in Mississippi and had a pretty good resume, so they asked me to coach (at CCHS) a couple years ago and it went in one ear and out the other,” Boatner said. “(When) they asked me (again) last year, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
A map shows where Clarke Central High School head varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner has lived, played and coached. Before moving to Athens, Boatner coached at Clarkdale High School and West Lauderdale High School in Mississippi, where he honed his small ball approach. “We teach discipline, attention to detail, responsibility and energy – we demand that,” Boatner said. “These schools bought into our philosophy, (into) our system (and) we had great success. We ended up winning 14 (baseball) state championships at West Lauderdale (and) eight in softball.” Map by Wyatt Meyer
CCHS Athletic Director Jon Ward didn’t immediately know of Boatner’s baseball expertise when they were introduced to each other by one of his grandson’s teammates’ parents, but when Ward did a deeper dive on Boatner’s coaching experience, he was blown away by his history of success.
Clarke Central High School head varsity baseball coach Jerry Boatner poses inside A.B. Weathersby Field on March 6. Boatner was a distinguished baseball coach during his time at West Lauderdale High School, but he is now tasked with righting a historically unsuccessful CCHS program. “We know what it takes to turn a program around and we’re willing to put in the work and put the time into it,” Boatner said. “It may take two or three years, a little bit longer than I thought, but we definitely will turn it around.” Photo by Lucas Donnelly
“I feel very confident that (Coach Boatner is) with us for years to come and he’ll give us everything he can. That’s just the kind of person (he) is,” Ward said. “(I have) a lot of respect for his optimism and the way he approaches baseball, but (also) life.”
Now, Boatner is tasked with rebuilding a Gladiator program that hasn’t had a winning season since Maxpreps began tracking records in 2008. In order to change the team’s culture, he’s upped the frequency and intensity of practices.
“All three schools that I’ve had (head coaching positions at) have never had a winning tradition, we had to develop it,” Boatner said. “If you go where there’s a winning tradition, you don’t have to work near as hard, so we have worked hard.”
Although the Gladiators started their season a winless 0-8, CCHS first baseman Luke Davis, a junior, believes the team has started to reap the rewards of Boatner’s teachings.
“There’s really no breaks when it comes to Coach Boatner, which I really like because we’re always doing something that’s going to help us win,” Davis said.
Boatner acknowledges that this isn’t his most talented team and he believes he will need time to rebuild. He’s started by placing emphasis on the little things, the things that don’t require skill, the things that all his teams are built upon: hustle, communication and situational awareness.
“(Coach Boatner has) the old-school mentality (that we’re) here to work and there’s a job to get done. Yeah, (we’re) gonna have fun, but there’s a mission that needs to take place and it takes everyone,” CCHS assistant varsity baseball coach William Lance said. “In some aspects, I have to be the counterweight.”
It would be near impossible for his time at CCHS to overshadow his accomplishments elsewhere and most people his age have long since retired. Yet, here he is, doing it all over again – the summer workouts, the weekend practices, the away-day blowouts, all in the name of a school 300 miles from where his legacy lies.
But for Boatner, baseball is life. The game is his craft, and he’s honed it finely, no matter how rough around the edges his teams are to begin.
“I made up my mind when I was 13 years old: I wouldn’t let anyone outwork me and I developed a work ethic second to none,” Boatner said. “(To) this day, at 77 years of age, I still haven’t seen anybody (who has) more energy and enthusiasm and work ethic than I do.”
Regardless of his performance in Athens, Boatner has established himself as a high school coaching legend. However, if he ends up righting the ship at CCHS, he can dedicate that turnaround to himself, from the little boy in Meridian working tirelessly on the mound to the 77-year-old coach doing the same from the dugout.
“I don’t know if anybody loves coaching more than I do,” Boatner said. “I don’t want to be a coach, I want to be the coach. (I want to) be the very best coach I can possibly be.”
