State titles abundant for Best of Preps coach finalists

Winning a state championship wasn’t a prerequisite for being named a finalist for the 2015 Scrappy Moore coach of the year award, but it certainly didn’t hurt. Four of the six finalists claimed state titles this past school year.

The six are Signal Mountain’s Beverly Blackwell, Dalton’s Matt Cheaves, Calhoun’s Hal Lamb, Central’s Rick Rogers, Marion County’s Ricky Ross and Cleveland’s Jake Yost.

The winner will be revealed at tonight’s annual Best of Preps banquet, where Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz will help honor the area’s top athletes and coaches. Doors will open at 6 p.m. for the 6:30 dinner.

In her eighth season as Signal Mountain track and field coach, Blackwell guided the Lady Eagles to a repeat of the Class A/AA state title, this one coming by a lopsided score (96-72 over East Nashville) compared to last year’s six-point nail-biter. A school-record 13 girls scored points in 13 events, including five as state champions.

In three consecutive seasons, Cheaves has led his Catamounts to Georgia boys’ soccer state championships — two years in Class AAAA and this season in AAAAA. During the three-year run, Dalton has gone 64-0-1, including a 20-0 record this season while outscoring opponents 96-11. The Catamounts finished the season ranked first nationally in both the Maxpreps.com and National Soccer Coaches Association of America polls and second in the TopDrawerSoccer.com poll. In five postseason matches, the Catamounts scored 32 goals while not allowing one.

A year after its earliest playoff exit in half a dozen years with Lamb running the show, the Calhoun football program faced what many believed was a crossroads. Having been soundly defeated by Benedictine in the Class AA quarterfinals in 2013, the Yellow Jackets were facing a move up to Class AAA with only a handful of starters returning. But Lamb’s Jackets went 15-0, defeating nationally ranked Washington County in a memorable championship game in the Georgia Dome. Washington Couny came in as Georgia’s all-time highest-scoring team with state player of the year A.J. Gray at quarterback, but Calhoun wore down the Golden Hawks and used a late trick play to score the winning touchdown in a 27-20 thriller.

In his ninth season as the Central boys’ basketball coach, Rogers guided the Purple Pounders to the program’s first Tennessee Class AA state tournament since 2000, winning the District 6 and Region 3 championships along the way. The Pounders finished the season 22-5, winning 12 straight games at one point. Aside from the loss in the state quarterfinals, the only teams to beat them were Brainerd and McCallie, which also reached their state tournaments, and Hamilton Heights, which was loaded with more college prospects than any other area team.

By the time Ross arrived, the Marion County football program had entered recovery mode from its third coaching change in four years. Because of self-imposed sanctions to accompany those decreed by the TSSAA, the Warriors had no spring practice and were limited to a week prior to the dead period. They came awfully close to touching upon the revered glory years of the 1990s, posting a 12-2 season that didn’t end until a loss in the Class 2A state championship game.

With Yost guiding Cleveland’s wrestling program, the Blue Raiders have thrived under the leadership of the former Soddy-Daisy and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga standout. They’ve now won three straight state duals and state traditional tournament titles. Although local rival Bradley Central wrested the Region 3-AAA championship away from them this year, the Blue Raiders went 20-4 and boosted Yost’s career head coaching record to 74-9.

Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293.