MOULTRIE – Jerry Croft, who had Tony Kirkland as an assistant on his baseball staffs at Colquitt County High for 11 seasons, has his opinion on why the current Packers coach and selectee for the Georgia Dugout Club’s Hall of Fame has been so successful.

“He was always just so meticulous in the way he went about his job,” said Croft, himself a Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame member. “Very dedicated to what he does. Hard-working, conscientious about what he does.”

Those attributes were on display when Kirkland was the hitting coach for the Colquitt County High School baseball teams that won state championships in 1997 and 2003. Colquitt won 208 games while Kirkland served as Packers assistant coach.

“He was an integral part of the success we had,” Croft said.

Kirkland left Colquitt County following the 2003 state championship season and was the head coach at South Effingham for six seasons, posting a 138-52 record and taking the Mustangs to the Final Four four times.

Kirkland returned to Colquitt County in 2010 and has a record of 152-118, taking the Packers to the Final Four in 2011.

With a record of 290-170, Kirkland will have a shot at his 300th career victory sometime next spring. His teams have won 20 or more games nine times.

“I’m extremely proud of the fact that he’s going in,” said Croft, who coached the Packers for 30 seasons. “It’s a well-deserved recognition.”

Kirkland will be inducted as part of the Georgia Dugout Club’s Class of 2019 in a Jan. 11 ceremony at the Marietta Hilton.

Also to be inducted will be Tony Boyd of East Paulding, George Hansen of Kennesaw Mountain, Andy Harlin of Blessed Trinity and Monty Nagel of Metter.

Kirkland said he remembers going to a Georgia Dugout Club banquet in the early 1990s and being impressed with the caliber of coaches represented.

“I saw the Hugh Buchanans, the David McDonalds, guys you know who do it right and who I looked up to,” Kirkland said. “These are guys I idolized.

“So this is very humbling. A lot of times you don’t see yourself as your mentors do. So it’s very special.”

A native of Dothan, Ala., Kirkland played college baseball at Wallace College before graduating from Florida State.

In 1992, he went to Colquitt County where he began coaching football as an assistant under Jim Hughes and baseball under Croft. He earned his first state championship ring when the football Packers went 15-0 in 1994.

Over the next nine years, he added two baseball state championship rings. He was named the Georgia Dugout Club Assistant Coach of the Year in both 1997 and 2003.

Kirkland and Keith Croft were the primary assistants under Jerry Croft during the state title seasons.

Keith Croft handled the pitchers and Kirkland worked with the hitters.

“He was a very good hitting instructor,” Jerry Croft said of Kirkland. “I just turned the hitting over to him and tried to stay out of his way.”

And that, Kirkland said, is what enabled him to mature as a coach.

“Jerry did a great job of allowing both Keith and I to work, to put our philosophies into play,” Kirkland said. “And that’s what I’ve tried to do as a head coach. It’s something I really believe in.”

One of the many players Kirkland had a positive effect on was Will Stuckey, who was an outstanding performer at Colquitt County, ABAC and Savannah State.

Stuckey, a career .351 hitter, was the Packers catcher from 1995-1998, helping lead the team to the state championship in 1997 and semifinal appearances in 1996 and 1998.

He also has been on the Packers coaching staff since 2003, working primarily with the catchers.

Stuckey’s first contact with Kirkland was when he was a 9th-grade defensive lineman of the Packers football team; his future boss was his position coach.

“He was a player’s coach,” Stuckey said. “You just wanted to play for him. I wanted to be at practice every day and I didn’t want to let him down.”

The following spring, Stuckey began his Packer baseball career with Kirkland as his hitting coach.

“Same thing,” Stuckey remembers. “He was super-energetic. You just wanted to give 120 percent.

While Kirkland was an assistant coach, he had several opportunities to take a head coaching job, but found it difficult to leave a promising upcoming group of young Packers.

Finally, however, in 2003, after the Packers won their second state championship in seven years, Kirkland accepted the job as head coach at South Effingham.

His first team went 25-9 overall and he was named the Region 2-AAA Coach of the Year after the Mustangs went 12-2 in league games. South Effingham reached the Final Four, where it fell to Cartersville.

Over the next five years, the Mustangs won 26, 21, 21, 24 and 21 games and advanced to the Final Four in 2005, 2007 and 2008.

His 2005 Mustangs featured current Houston Astros outfielder Josh Reddick. His final South Effingham team made it to the state quarterfinals and went 21-10. Also in 2009, he coached Team Georgia in the Sunbelt Senior Classic in Norman, Okla., for the first time.

He returned to Moultrie the next season as the Packers head coach and led the team to a 13-12 record, its first winning season since 2005.

“I know he had a lot of success over there (at South Effingham),” Jerry Croft said. “But I was glad when he came back.”

Also in 2010, he oversaw the building of an 8,500-square-foot hitting facility next to Jerry Croft Stadium at Ike Aultman Field.

The next year, he led Colquitt County to a 22-14 record, a Region championship and a berth in the Final Four, where the Packers were eliminated by Parkview.

The Packers repeated as region champions in 2012.

The program’s next region title came in 2017, and last spring the Packers went 22-12 and reached the state’s “Sweet 16.”

Stuckey, honored last spring as the Georgia Dugout Club’s Class 7A Assistant Coach of the Year, said Kirkland is a delight to work for.

“He knows what he wants to do, but he also wants to know what we (the assistant coaches) want to do as well,” Stuckey says.

“If I ever become a head coach, I’ll model what I do after what he does. I consider him my coaching mentor.”

Over his 16-year head coaching career, Kirkland has helped 45 of his players sign to play college baseball; five have been drafted professionally.

Of his seven Coach of the Year awards, four have come since he returned to Colquitt County.

And he has been active at the state level as well.

Four times he has been the head coach in Georgia Dugout Club All-Star games and he was named the organization’s Ethics and Professional Coaching Award recipient in 2013.

The following year he was named the Georgia Dugout Club’s president.

Kirkland coached Team Georgia in both the Sunbelt Classic and the Heartland Classic in Norman, Okla., for six years. He also coached the Junior and Sophomore Team Georgia squads in 2016 and Junior Team Georgia in 2017.

Stuckey says he is amazed at how many baseball people know Kirkland and how well-regarded he is, among both his peers and his former players.

“When we go somewhere, like the Georgia Dugout Club, he’s talking with everybody,” he said. “He’s rubbing shoulders with everybody.

“And even here. When our guys come back, even if they’ve been gone 18 years, the first person they go find is Coach Kirkland.”