Cedar Shoals to rename baseball field in honor of first head coach

Cedar Shoals has renamed its baseball field and will dedicate it with a ceremony on Wednesday. The recipient is the late James Holston, an Athens Athletic Hall of Famer (2005) and an inaugural member of the Cedar Shoals Athletics Hall of Fame (2017). Holston was a four-year football letterman at Fort Valley State Holston was the school's first head baseball coach.

He led the Jaguars from their inaugural season in 1973 through 1983 and worked at Cedar Shoals from the school's opening in 1972 as a science teacher through 1994. He taught biology and physical science. Holston began his coaching career at Athens High and Industrial School in 1960, serving as the offensive coordinator for the football team.

He saw the school renamed to Burney-Harris. Following the integration of Clarke County schools in 1970, he spent two years at Clarke Central before the district reassigned him and a batch of other faculty to the brand-new Cedar Shoals in 1972. The renaming was approved by the Clarke County School District Board of Education in 2025 after a strong push from former Jaguar baseball players Rev.

Lamar Sandoval and Anthony Pittman. Sandoval was a bat boy for Holston's program in the eighth grade and played under Holston from 1977-78. “I think this is instrumental for Cedar Shoals and today’s players," Sandoval said in a March 17 district press release.