MOULTRIE, Ga. — Tony Kirkland has been named as the middle school athletic director, but Colquitt County baseball fans should not fret.

Kirkland will be back for his 10th season as the Packers head baseball coach next spring. He’ll be doing some double-duty, but he has proved in the past he can handle it.

The middle school athletic director post came open when Jake Mobley, who has handled the position the last two years, took a job as an assistant principal at Charlie A. Gray Junior High.

Colquitt County athletic director Greg Tillery was hoping to find someone to take Mobley’s place who would be familiar with Packer athletics. He didn’t have to look further than one of his former bosses. Tillery is a former assistant baseball coach and has known Kirkland for years.

“I was looking for someone I was comfortable with and someone I could work with,” Tillery said. “I think it’s going to work out. He’ll fit right in.

“And he’ll keep coaching the baseball team. He’s done a great job with it.”

Tillery said he hated to lose Mobley, a former Packer football and baseball player who had been the varsity softball coach before taking the middle school AD job.

“We talked about it and (becoming an assistant principal) was the path he wanted to go,” Tillery said. “He had done a good job, keeping up with everything and building relationships with students.

“Tony will step right in and continue that.”

Kirkland will work three days a week at Gray and two days at Willie J. Williams Middle School. Kirkland has coached football and baseball during his career and has earned three Colquitt County state championship rings: one as an assistant to Jim Hughes on the 1994 football team and the others as an assistant to Jerry Croft on the 1997 and 2003 baseball teams.

He began working in Colquitt County in 1992 and coached both sports until leaving in 2003 to be the head baseball coach and assistant football coach at South Effingham. Kirkland led South Effingham baseball program to a 138-52 record over the next six seasons, four times taking the Mustangs to the Class AAA Final Four. Josh Reddick, one of Kirkland’s South Effingham players, is currently a member of the reigning World Series champion Houston Astros.

In 2010, Kirkland returned to Colquitt County as head baseball coach, taking over a Packer program that had won just 39 games over the four previous seasons. Over the past nine seasons, the Packers have gone 152-118, winning region championships in 2011, 2012 and 2017 and reaching the Final Four in 2011.

Colquitt has won 20 or more games three times over the last nine seasons, including last year, when the Packers went 22-12 and reached the second round of the playoffs. With a career head coaching record of 290-170, Kirkland will have a shot at getting a milestone victory No. 300 next spring.

Next season Kirkland also will welcome son Colin Kirkland, a former Packer and Thomas University infielder, to his coaching staff. Tillery said the younger Kirkland also will join the seventh-grade football team’s coaching staff. Colin Kirkland will teach math at C.A. Gray.

Tony Kirkland also coached the Colquitt County football team’s defensive ends in 2009 and 2010.