MOULTRIE — Taylor Barber was introduced last month as an assistant to new Colquitt County head baseball coach Ryan Strickland.

He was named again on Monday as the new head coach of the Lady Packers fast pitch softball team, replacing Chance Pitts, who resigned from that post and has taken over the school’s resurrected slow pitch team.

Barber, a 2011 Colquitt County graduate, had been Tift County’s head fast pitch softball coach the last five seasons and should feel right at home in the Colquitt County dugout.

He was an assistant coach with the Packers for three seasons before taking the job with the Lady Devils.

“I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity to come back home and lead a program that I’ve been part of before, but also one that has been built to one of the most successful programs in the state over the last few years,” he said.

During his tenure at Tift County, he and the program earned several significant milestones:

• State playoff appearances in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

• One Sweet 16 appearance in 2022.

• 25 All-Region selections.

• Five All-State selections.

2020 Region 1-7A Coach of the Year award.

Six collegiate signings.

The 2022 Lady Blue Devils broke every school offensive team record with three players breaking five individual single-season and career records of hits, doubles, triples and home runs.

Barber, the third-winningest coach in Tift County’s fast pitch history, also was selected as a member of the 2022 and 2023 Georgia Dugout Club All-State coaching staffs.

“We know we are getting a coach that believes in putting in the hard work needed to be successful on the diamond,” Colquitt County Athletic Director Cleve Edwards said.

Colquitt County Principal Chris Merritt added, “Coach Barber knows the tradition of Lady Packer softball and has been part of its past success. He has proven himself by building a quality program in Tifton.”

Barber will have a busy first week.

The Packers baseball team is traveling to Auburn for a camp and the softball team is hosting its annual summer tournament.

And he said he is eager to get to the Magnolia Sports Complex and watch Colquitt County’s 8U girls All-Star softball team in action in the GRPA state tournament that opens Tuesday evening.

Barber said he will keep the same coaching staff that helped Pitts lead the Lady Packers to a 20-12 record last fall.

That group will include veteran coaches Ryan Davis, Spenser Richardson, Will Stuckey and Rhonda Manley.

Ashley Legaspi and Ethan Hopper will continue to work with the middle-schoolers.

“It’s a blessing to walk into a situation and have a group like that, a group I can trust,” he said. “I am going to rely heavily on them.”

Barber was a pitcher on the 2011 Colquitt County baseball team that reached the state semifinals against Parkview.

After graduating from Georgia Southern, he returned to Colquitt County and worked as an assistant in both the baseball and softball programs before going to Tift County in 2019 as a baseball assistant and head softball coach.

He and wife Elizabeth Ann, a former Colquitt County, Moss Farms and University of Georgia diver and current sixth-grade math teacher at Willie J. Williams Middle School, have two boys, 3-year-old Keegan and 2-month-old Cannon.