Agent is new Poplarville baseball coach

Published 5:26 pm Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Jimmy Agent has four baseball state championship rings from his days as both a player and a coach at Oak Grove High School.

He hopes the next title ring he gets fitted for is as head coach at Poplarville High.

Agent was named to that post recently, replacing interim head coach Pete Sciarabba. Sciarabba guided the Hornets to the postseason last year, after quickly replacing Cedric Smith who was fired just prior to the season.

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“I just felt like it was the right time and this was the right opportunity for me to become a head coach,” Agent, who was an assistant to the legendary Harry Breland with the Warriors for the past eight seasons, said. “Poplarville is a great community with a great school system, and I felt like this would be the perfect starting point for me.”

Agent is coming off his latest state title, as the Warriors captured the Class 5A crown two months ago.

“Coach (John) Miller (Poplarville’s Athletics Director) called me after the job opened up, and I said I was interested but we were still involved in the playoffs at Oak Grove,” Agent said. “Once our season was over I talked with him about it and felt like it was a good fit.”

Agent is taking over a team that made the Class 4A playoffs two seasons ago and earned a berth in the Division 8-4A postseason tournament last year. He hopes to bring the success he has had on the diamond in Lamar County with him to Pearl River County.

“There is some talent there, and we just have to keep cultivating it and finding more of it,” Agent added. “We will instill values and goals in the kids that you need to have in order to win championships. Our ultimate goal will always be to win the state championship every year. But we will have to start by setting smaller goals to reach in order to reach that bigger one.”

Agent was part of the 1987 team as a player at OGHS that won the state championship, and then part of a coaching staff that won three more including last year’s.