As of Friday, April 20, 2012
© Copyright 2013
Albany Herald
Albany High A.D. Archie Chatmon
ALBANY — The Albany High baseball team has been hit by the injury bug, as well as dwindling participation, and as a result the school has decided to cancel the remainder of the 2012 baseball season.
“We had four kids get hurt and we don’t have a lot of numbers, so it puts us in a tough situation to even be able to play,” AHS athletic director Archie Chatmon told The Herald Thursday evening. “So we notified the region that we made the call to cancel the rest of the season.”
Chatmon, who has been at Albany for nearly three decades, said he thought the program, which is coached by his brother Charles, was on the verge of a turnaround this season and was disappointed to have to take such a drastic step.
“The numbers have been down the last few years, but we’ve managed to make it through the season,” he said. “And I actually thought we would gain this year, but we didn’t. For the kids, especially the seniors, this hurts.”
Albany (1-15) had one win on the season and was mired in a nine-game losing streak when it opted to begin forfeiting games, which began last Friday against Cook.
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Comments
ObjectiveEyes 1 year, 1 month ago
Sad, truly sad that, in the baseball hotbed of Sowega, a high school cannot generate enough interest in America's past time! Wow!
LuLu 1 year, 1 month ago
I know nothing about high school baseball, but usually in any type of organization, problems this bad are a direct result of poor leadership.
Darien 1 year, 1 month ago
Wow, no leadership in County, Albany and now schools. Albany has really gone to the dogs in the past 25 years.
tywebb 1 year, 1 month ago
danny, i don't think coach chatmon has been the AD for 3 decades. i think scott horton was the AD about 6-7 years ago before he became the schools AP.
Sister_Ruby 1 year, 1 month ago
coachjohnson43 should comment on this one. Come on coach, give us some of your impeccable wisdom and insight.
myside 1 year, 1 month ago
This is just another example of Albany failing at everything. Maybe the baseball season would take too much time away from the gang activity the students enjoy so much.
rorschach 1 year, 1 month ago
High school baseball teams need feeder programs in order to be competitive in Southwest Ga. With the exception of Thomasville, all of the cities in the region have only one high school. These cities have entire youth leagues that end up attending the same high school. Since there is no Jr. High school baseball in Albany it's the luck of the draw if any school besides Westover gets any students with baseball experience. Westover's student count is much higher than the other schools so they have many more students come out. Coaches at Monroe, Dougherty and Albany have all done great jobs of keeping their teams together with the numbers being as low as they are. No coach can be prepared to lose four players to injuries with only 12 to 15 players on the team. I believe that having baseball in middle school would go a long way toward restoring all of Albany's high school baseball teams back to the caliber of programs this city is used to.
coachjohnson42 1 year, 1 month ago
The problem here is deeper than leadership. Students today (especially in Albany) are no longer interested in sports like baseball, tennis, and wrestling. If you ever go to these games or matches, the attendance is extremely low. Sometimes the parents don't even go. Albany High in the past 20 years has always been the smaller high school and Coaches there have to beg students in the hallway to come out for sports. Change would have to come from the top, but a lateral push from around the city needs step up first so these high schools will have a better athletic pool of kids to work with. Recreational sports need to step up their programs with better coaches and recruiting practices. If they step it up, then maybe these kids would try out for high school sports. Otherwise, these high school programs will continue to fail. Kids today really don't care about these smaller sports.
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