North Oconee baseball selects coach to lead program after Jay Lasley departed for MLB team

North Oconee baseball has announced its new head coach in Eric Bounds.

Bounds has been with the Titans since 2015, serving as the first base and hitting coach and handling catchers and outfielders defensively under former coach Jay Lasley.

"Coach Lasley set the precedent as far as setting the standard for us, so to be able to continue that is (awesome)," Bounds said. "I'm really looking forward to it. It's a standard that a lot of people achieve, and want to aspire to be, so having the ability to take that over is really exciting."

Lasley left at the end of the 2024 season, just before the Titans made their run to the GHSA state semifinals, after accepting a job with the Marlins organization as an international player developer in the Dominican Republic.

Bounds was part of Lasley's 2022 and 2023 state championship staffs and they accumulated a 214-64-1 record together in his tenure.

"Any time you're stepping into that situation where you're stepping into a team that's been to, I think the last five years we've been in a Final Four or better, there's going to be pressure," Bounds said. "I'm just excited to be able to step in and do that and keep going with where we're at."

Bounds graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2002 with a degree in turf management — he went back to school for his masters in kinesiology in 2018 — and this is his first head coaching job.

The semi-connected career switch from field to athlete happened after he spent time working for the Jaguars, and then as a golf course superintendent. He ended up at Camden County in 2008 as a landscape manager and the Wildcats were the reason he fell in love with coaching.

He spent seven years as an assistant coach at Camden County, earning himself the title of Class 5A Assistant Coach of the Year in 2011 before making the move to Bogart.

Now, he teaches environmental science and advanced placement environmental science at the high school to all grade levels. He has three kids of his own, ages 11, 9 and 8.

"I've thought about moving and going into head coaching, there's been positions open that I've thought about applying for, but this one obviously, being here and knowing what it entails, having seen what's gone on and been part of building that culture, it was a no brainer as far as trying to put in for it," Bounds said.

This is the first of several changes to come from the North Oconee athletic department and in the Athens-area sports scene. Former girls soccer head coach Ben Grassmyer and his assistant Jon Skinner are also leaving the Titans, which was announced following their heartbreaker in the Class 4A championship earlier this month.

"When we interviewed (Eric), he had a really clear vision of what he wanted to do," athletic director Michael Dowis said. "We knew, obviously, he's been here for years, we knew his baseball knowledge, his IQ about the game, so that wasn't an issue. It came down to a lot about what his vision was, what he wanted to do with the program, and he had a great, very organized plan for building on what we already have done. Obviously, we've been successful, so to take that and not change it, but to build on it and where to take the program now, how to get there, cause getting there's hard, but maintaining is even harder."

Bounds' first order of business, once he got the guys up to speed with his title shift Wednesday morning, is going to be establishing a better system for developing leadership roles on the team.

He said he likes what Lasley had going and, for the most part, things are going to remain the same, but he wants to stop having the same conversation at the end of every year; the one where they ask themselves where they could've been better.

"I think setting the role for them, the expectation, so they know as a sophomore, hey your expectation is this and you need to be ready to step in, whether it's a vocal role or being visibly there, the first guy in and last guy out type of stuff," Bounds said. "What we already do is pretty special, but taking the people and leadership aspect to another level is something I really want to focus on."

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Get to know him: Eric Bounds, new North Oconee baseball head coach