Ever since being named headmaster at Central Holmes, Tony Banks has been looking for his replacement as head baseball coach.
He finally found his guy as the Trojans hired Ty Dean to be the next baseball coach. Central Holmes will be Dean’s first head coaching job after he was an assistant at Benton Academy last year. Dean also coaches in the summer with the East Coast Sox. But the move to Central Holmes was an easy one for Dean.
“It’s close to home and that helps,” Dean said. “I like to get home as much as I can. We just had our first kid and the grandparents like to see her as much as possible.”
Dean has a ton of baseball experience. He played in high school at Kosciusko and then played for two years at Mississippi Delta. He finished his playing career at Belhaven.
Dean realizes that he will have a young team after the Trojans graduated eight seniors.
“I think the biggest things is if the kids will show up with an attitude to listen and learn, we will be okay,” Dean said. “I just need them go give me 100 percent every day. And if they do that, there is no telling the ceiling for this team. There is a lot of talent here, even though we lost some kids last year, I’m excited to get started.”
Dean said the Trojans will not play any summer ball this year and he is spending most of his time working on the field.
“The field has been my main focus so far,” Dean said. “I want the players to be comfortable on their home field. Coach Banks has done a good job with it and it has come a long way. I just want to keep that trend going on. I think the baseball field represents the coach. Right now we are just focusing on the playing surface. We brought the fence in a little bit and have worked on the sprinkler system and got that back going.”
Dean will also coach football where he will work with quarterbacks and cornerbacks. He will also get the chance to coach his younger brother, Jace Dean, who transferred from Ethel.
“For the short time I’ve been around them at football I can tell they have a great work ethic,” Dean said. “Their job is to show up everyday with that same work ethic. My job is to develop them as baseball players. If we both do our job, at the end of the year we should be playing for a championship.”
For Banks, he said it was just time to step back from baseball after coaching the team for four years and since he became headmaster.
“It was just time,” Banks said. “It’s hard to do both of these jobs. I’ve been looking for a guy the last couple of years and I think I got the one I want. When I found that guy, it was time. I’ll probably still be involved in seventh and eighth grade baseball.
“He’s a young guy and it takes time to keep a field up and he has a passion to do that. I think he will be a really good coach. He has been here two or three weeks now and he’s working on the field every day. He’s really taking ownership.”
Dean is married to Hanna Dean and they have a 10-month old daughter named Layla Kate.
