NOTEPAD: ACE hires Kurt Greene, FPD extends winning streak

ACE named Kurt Greene, a longtime hoops coach in the Middle Georgia area, as the new Gryphons head coach this week.

Greene will replace head coach and assistant athletic director Todd Whetsel, who returned to Central Fellowship to become athletic director and dean of students, CFCA announced last month.

While he was most recently an assistant coach under legendary Stratford head coach Ed Smith, Greene has plenty of credentials all his own. He was the head coach at Jones County for several years before leaving in 2010 to be the head coach at Mary Persons.

Greene then “retired” in 2017, coaching at Gatewood, Windsor, Northside and Tattnall in minor roles before arriving at Stratford in 2024. 

As a head coach at Mary Persons and Jones County, Greene won several region championships and made it to the Final Four three times — two trips to the semifinals with Jones County and another with Mary Persons.

Greene inherits a program on the rise at ACE, as Whetsel guided the team to a 21-5 record and its first-ever playoff victory in the 2024-25 season before a solid 17-9 effort this year got the Gryphons to the playoffs again.

FPD baseball keeps winning streak alive with walk-off

The FPD Vikings continued their winning ways last week, defeating the Tattnall Trojans twice to extend their winning streak to 14 games.

The Vikings’ most recent loss came against Veterans, a GHSA Class 5A school, in a 12-9 defeat on the road February 24. 

One of the two games against Tattnall was the closest game against a non-GHSA opponent all year for the Vikings, as FPD got a thrilling walk-off win 3-2. The game was tied 2-2 going into the final inning, with respective aces Conner Strandmark (FPD) and Wyatt Still (Tattnall) both pitching extremely well through the first six frames.

Strandmark finished the seventh inning cleanly, and it looked like Still might do the same until Tattnall slotted in a new pitcher to face Keon Johnson, the highly-touted shortstop for FPD.  Johnson didn’t waste any time, smacking the first pitch from reliever Braxton Collins to right-center field for a walk-off solo shot.

That was the Vikings’ 13th consecutive victory, and they snagged their 14th win in a row with a 13-8 defeat of Tattnall on April 2. FPD remains the No. 1 team in the state among GIAA Class 4A competitors, according to the GIAA MaxPreps rankings. Stratford is ranked No. 2, while Tattnall is No. 6.

Mercer softball preps for another SoCon series

The Mercer softball team will face another Southern Conference as they continue their up-and-down campaign with a series against Furman this weekend. 

The Bears were 16-20 overall and 4-5 in conference play as of Tuesday, though their overall record is marred by several games against top programs like Tennessee, Georgia and Ole Miss.

As far as conference play goes, Mercer has seen highs and lows. The Bears lost their three-game sets against Samford and Chattanooga, but did manage to win one game in each of those series. The victory against Samford is one of only two losses for the Bulldogs in the SoCon so far. They also won a series against Wofford to keep their SoCon record in the top half of the league.

Mercer’s most recent win, a 5-2 victory against Chattanooga, was fueled in part by junior catcher Olivia Lenzen, who hit a game-tying home run in the second inning before the Bears pulled away for good in the fourth inning. Lenzen, a transfer from Wofford, is hitting over .400 so far this season with seven home runs.

The Mercer offense is also led by longtime fixture Avery Barton, who leads the team with 11 long balls and also has an OPS over 1.000. The Bears have struggled a bit on the pitching side, as the staff has a cumulative ERA of 6.92 this season.

After a non-conference game against Georgia Southern on Wednesday, Mercer is set to take on Furman at home in a doubleheader starting Saturday at 1 p.m. before a series finale Sunday afternoon.