BAY MINETTE, Alabama - Baldwin County High volleyball coach Mike Tucker hopes to turn the Lady Tigers program around this year by getting through the area tournament and beyond.

With BCHS in a new area alignment and a new South Super Regional 64-team tournament format, many other teams will be in new territory as well.

But the veteran coach brings 26 years of volleyball coaching experience with over 500 wins at the high school and college level combined. Tucker feels this BCHS team still has what it takes.

“We have made a lot of progress since I got here,” he said. “I have been doing this for a while and I knew it would take a while for us to get to know each other. But after the season started and we kind of got on the same page together, good things started happening. Despite playing hard and beating some good teams in some tournaments, we had some let downs in our area games and so now we will face the consequences. We had a chance to finish second with a little help from Foley but we failed to help ourselves enough in this last area game (at Foley). But I still believe this group of girls, each one and, as a team has a lot of fight left in them and well see what happens in the area tournament.”

Tucker and his wife Paige were most recently living in the Anniston area where he coached volleyball and softball for Saks High School.

They were hoping to find an opening in Baldwin County to be nearer family and simply picked up the phone. As it happened former BCHS volleyball coach and baseball pitching coach Scott Daugherty had just resigned to pursue other career interests.

The New Orleans native had just led the Lady Wildcats to a 37-8 record and a regional appearance on the volleyball court last fall and led the softball team to the 3A state championship last spring. He will also take over on the 6A Lady Tigers’ fastpitch diamond efforts next season.

“We loved it up there, but we also really needed to be closer to family down here. We were just blessed it worked out so fast.”

His daughter lives in Pensacola, Fla., his wife’s father lives in Daphne and he also has relatives in the Sweetwater area he enjoys visiting.

“And I still have people in New Orleans so being this close to I-10 and 65 will save us a lot of travel time,” he said.

Tucker coached at Mississippi State and UMS-Wright before his stint at Saks and spent six years at Class 4A UMS-Wright where he led the Lady Bulldogs to a third-place state ranking three times and the playoffs each year. During that time he coached against Robertsdale head coach Metta Roberts who was the BCHS coach.

“Metta and I had some good teams and had some good games back then,” Tucker said. “Now I’m back and coaching against her at Robertsdale. She is a very good coach and she has that team playing very, very well.”

His time at UMS-Wright was divided by a call to ministry that he said changed his life.

“I read a book by John Croyle, Brodie Croyle’s father, and that’s when I really felt the Lord was calling me to that ministry.”

So in 2000, he and wife moved to become houseparents at John Croyle’s Big Oak Ranch for the next seven years. The ranch is a Christian-based home for abused or neglected children.

In 2008, he felt that he was being called back into coaching.

“The ranch experience was wonderful and we will always be thankful we were called to it,” Tucker said. “But I was fortunate to get the job at Saks and after that first year they asked me to take over softball too and I really felt blessed.”

He won the area title for Saks in all four of his seasons there and hopes he can help the Tigers claim their first area title in recent memory.

“When they were in there with McGill, I don’t think they ever won it. But then they were usually second and made the playoffs. This year, it’s different with the five team area in Baldwin County, but we are going to work and prepare for that first area match.

“I want them to go hard for the area title whether we finished in first place or fifth place, it’s still there for the taking in the area tournament. They just have to work hard and believe.”