By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

If it’s the spring, it must be time for moves at ACE Charter.

A year ago, flowers bloomed and people moved. And this year …

The Gryphons have added veteran and basketball junkie Kurt Greene as their newest head girls basketball coach.

Greene confirmed the move last week in a conversation with The Central Georgia Sports Report, but had yet to sign a contract.

The school announced the move Monday morning in a social media post.

The Gryphons get one of Central Georgia’s more successful and well-traveled head girls coaches who at 71 hasn’t slowed down much. He has spent the past two seasons as an assistant with Ed Smith at Stratford.

Greene said head football coach Keith Hatcher and athletics director Thomas Darrah contacted him shortly after the announcement that head girls coach – and assistant AD and golf coach – Todd Whetsel was leaving at the end of the school year for the AD job, among others, at Central Fellowship.

Greene is still wearing a neck brace from surgery last month to repair two vertebrae, so Hatcher and Darrah came to visit him.

“They came over to my house, sat here for a couple hours, and we talked,” Greene said. “I really enjoyed being over at Stratford, I really like the kids, and they had pretty much let me do for the most part what I wanted.”

So, it wasn’t an automatic decision. But after a talk with his wife, he was ready.

“I feel good,” Greene said. “Without the fact that I got his big ol’ neck brace on … “I’m looking forward to it.

2024: Tattnall makes a change

Greene has sat alongside Ed Smith at Stratford the past two seasons as a girls assistant coach. That came after three successful seasons at Tattnall during which the Trojans went 15-10-16-13, and 19-11 under their fourth head coach in four years.

The program’s beset run in several years wasn’t enough to prevent the school from making a change in April of 2024, ostensibly because “I was too hard, and sometimes demeaning to some of my players,” he told The Central Georgia Sports Report at the time.

“My old players who played for me at Windsor and Jones County and those places, they sit there and laugh and say, ‘You done got so soft,’” he said then.

The 2025-26 carousel

👉🏼 March 31: Coaching carousel: Peach County girls basketball, Dublin football, Twiggs County football, Mount de Sales basketball
👉🏼 March 19: Upson-Lee has jobs, jobs, jobs open: Lockhart retires, Elder and Kirksey leaving for new gigs
👉🏼 March 12: Moving on: Westside's Grube and Roberson; Moving back in: Mount de Sales' Slocum
👉🏼 March 10: Job filled: Jasper County snags veteran Pinkins as new head football coach
👉🏼 March 6: After years of waiting, Belflower gets the call to be head coach, taking over at Central Fellowship
👉🏼 March 4: Job filled/help wanted: Central Fellowship taps ACE's Whetsel as new athletics director
👉🏼 Feb. 20: Central Georgia carousel: Cummings returns to take over football at Southwest
👉🏼 Feb. 12: From Macon to Montezuma, Risper lands at Macon County
👉🏼 Feb. 6: More spinning of The Carousel: Washington County has a new head coach; Jasper County loses Henderson to East Jackson
👉🏼 Feb. 5: Coaching Carousel: Mount de Sales' Yates moves back to Memphis in unique situation; Macon County makes another change
👉🏼 Jan. 17: Westside has a new head football coach
👉🏼 Jan. 14: Central Fellowship’s Walls stepping down from several jobs for one with the family business
👉🏼 Jan. 14: Dupree leaving Southwest, his alma mater, after 13 years for top job at familiar McDonough
👉🏼Dec. 19: Familiar face - Jamoski Ward - to take over at Central
👉🏼 Nov. 4: First HS football coaching casualty of 2025: Central's Laws on-field successes minimal, but off-field progress notable
👉🏼 May 27: Westside’s Risper announces resignation after the 2025 season

The Trojans have gone 15-29 in the two seasons since he left.

ACE is heading in the other direction, having gone 68-38 in Whetsel’s four seasons. According to the roster compiled by ACE on MaxPreps, the Gryphons lose only one senior from last year’s 17-9 team, and will be joined by Bleckley County transfer Ava Jenkins, now eligible.

His career started at as a boys assistant at Mary Persons. His alma mater, Jonesco Academy, hired him to coach boys. He coached boys to start out in his first stint at Gatewood, and then started coaching girls, coaching both.

He has coached girls ever since, and except for his one season at Northside, reached at least one Final Four at each pre-retirement stop, which included Windsor, Jones County, and Mary Persons.

After retirement, he spent one season back at Gatewood, then coached JV boys at Mary Persons, and then girls at Jasper County/Monticello. He took off 2020-21 year off from coaching.

Greene went 606-319 as a girls head coach when he "retired" from Mary Persons in the spring of 2017, having taken Jones County and Mary Persons to Final Fours. Upon retirement, he was head coach at Gatewood and returned to Mary Persons as an assistant before taking over at Jasper County/Monticello in 2019-20.

Gainous moving on from Perry

For years, Mark Gainous has had a Twtter/X handle that indicated where he was: “GC hoops” and then “Perry hoops.”

Now, it’s “Gainous_Hoops.”

Gainous is currently a free agent, having resigned as Perry’s head boys basketball coach in March.

It’s the latest move in a flurry the last few years for the family.

Tasha Gainous took over as the head girls coach at Perry in 2021-22 and moved their two children with her to Perry.

So, Mark had an 80-minute commute each day from his job as Georgia College’s men’s head coach, until they bought a house.

Then after her second year and his first, Tasha left the basketball job to spend more time with their kids, but remained in the Perry system as a teacher.

She then made the move back to John Milledge to start this year, where she was the head girls coach before heading to Perry. She’s teaching and coaching in the elementary school, but spent much of the basketball season helping out the JMA girls varsity and then-pregnant head coach – and now ‘Mom’ – Jordan Walters.

It was around the end of the basketball season that they were selling their house in Perry and buying one in Milledgeville.

That led to speculation that the 2025-26 season was likely Mark’s last with the Panthers.

The Cairo native was hired in March of 2022 as the head coach at Perry, joining Tasha, who was the head girls coach, having been hired for the 2021-22 season.

He had spent 19 years at Georgia College, the final eight as head coach. The Bobcats recorded their first 20-win season since 2009-10 in Gainous’ final year.

The Panthers struggled to a 5-20 mark in Gainous’s final season, giving him a 33-74 mark in his first high school coaching job.

Attempts to reach him Monday morning were unsuccessful, and this will be updated when that changes.

Help wanted: Dodge County girls basketball

CaSandra (Walker) Hamilton and her family have been invested in Dodge County basketball for decades.

That’s changing.

After nine seasons has head girls basketball coach at Dodge County following four years as an assistant, Hamilton is hanging up the whistle.

The school posted the open recently, but Hamilton touched on the future in a January Facebook post on her personal page.

“I would like to take the time to say thank you to all who have supported me on this basketball journey! Thank you, God, for the talents you have given me. Basketball has been my passion for a very long time. Thank you to the BOE for trusting me to work with many talented and amazing young ladies. …

“Thank you, fans, sorry I couldn't please you all, but I gave it my best. Thank you to all my loyal sponsors who felt it not robbery to give and help my girls. And last but not least, I thank all my wonderful coaches, Darnell Thomas, Mike Hilliard, Dick Kelly, and John Carrick, thank you.

“As I pass the torch to the next coach at DCHS, I pray that your success exceeds all of us before you.”

Dodge County went 7-18 in her final season, only her second losing season since taking over in 2016-17. As per information submitted by Dodge County to MaxPreps, Hamilton went 190-81 in 10 seasons. The school, though, honored her in January for her 200th win.

Six of Hamilton’s teams won 20 games, with four winning at least 25 games, en route to four region titles and four Sweet 16 trips.

Around Central Georgia

Kurt Williams doesn’t have too long a drive for his new job.

Ousted in January as head football coach at Macon County, Williams is now the Feagan Mill Middle School athletics director.

Feagan Mill is in the Houston County High zone. …

There are a number of area basketball jobs still open: Westside boys and girls, Northeast girls, and Upson-Lee boys, among others.

State high school basketball writer Kyle Sandy also lists Wilkinson County boys and girls as open.