Jon David Poss hired as new Pontotoc baseball coach
Pontotoc has hired Jon David Poss to be its new baseball coach, the school district announced via Facebook on Wednesday.
“It's been a long process,” Poss said. “But we knew that if we stuck through it that we felt like we had a chance.”
Poss, who graduated from Amory in 2015, has been an assistant coach at Oxford since the 2020-21 season. The Chargers reached the Class 7A North half finals this year.
Before that, he spent a year as an assistant coach at Starkville and the two years prior as a graduate assistant at Oxford. He now heads east on Highway 6 for his first head coaching job.
“It's tradition rich and a place that is prideful in their baseball and all their athletics as well as a great school district,” Poss said of Pontotoc. “We're excited to get into a community that’s supportive and enthusiastic about baseball and kind of hit the ground running.”
As region play winded down throughout the state this season, Poss and Pontotoc began to ramp up conversations. Things came together not long after.
“It's kind of having your hand in a couple of different fires,” he said. “But one that we knew that, if the opportunity were given to us, it was one that we would be very excited about taking.”
As a former baseball player at Amory, Poss faced Pontotoc many times throughout his career. Through those meetings, Poss grew familiar with the town’s support of its teams and knew it was a great place for him and his family to be.
“It’s everything that we look for,” he said. “It's a place that we can move our family and sink our heels in the community and be involved and really just hit the ground running and get to know everybody as soon as possible.”
Poss replaces Josh Dowdy, who will remain in the school district as a principal.
Pontotoc is coming off a season in which it finished 15-14 and third in Region 1-5A. The Warriors lost to Lafayette, which has since reached the state finals, in two games in the state quarterfinals.
