Metro Atlanta football players switch over to baseball

Two of the most highly recruited football players in Georgia aren’t playing for their high school football teams this fall.

Cartersville running back Donovan Tate and Sandy Creek wide receiver Braxton Lane, both original members of the AJC’s Super Southern 100 and The Georgia 150, will focus on baseball instead.

For Tate, it probably means the end of his football career. A center fielder, Tate is rated the best player prospect in the nation among high school seniors by Baseball America and could be the No. 1 pick in baseball’s June draft.

But Lane said he wants the option of playing football and baseball in college and hoped his decision not to play football this fall wouldn’t affect his recruitment at Georgia Tech and other major Division 1-A schools.

“I don’t know if they know yet,” Lane said of Tech. “If they do [back off], then that’s their decision, but I know not all of them will. I’m not worried.”

Lane is a switch-hitting outfielder who joined Tate earlier this month in the Aflac All-American Game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

Lane said he has football scholarship offers from Georgia Tech, Auburn, Kentucky, Oregon, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Minnesota and Central Florida. He caught 55 passes as a junior at Sandy Creek, the school that graduated former Tech All-America receiver Calvin Johnson.

Tech is recruiting Lane as an A-Back, which would have him lining up outside the tackles and going in motion, often receiving passes or pitchouts from the quarterback.

Lane’s high school coach, Chip Walker, said Lane made a personal decision that the coach wouldn’t second-guess. But Walker did add, “I’m old-school,” and then pointed to the example of Ken Swilling, his high school teammate two decades ago at Stephens County who lettered in four sports and became a football All-American at Georgia Tech.

“It didn’t slow him down one bit,” Walker said.

Cartersville coach Frank Barden was expecting Tate, the son of former Georgia star Lars Tate, at football practice until almost the last minute earlier this month, when Tate finally made a firm decision.

“I had said all along that our team and our kids and coaches would support Donovan and pull for him whether that’s being a football or baseball player,” Barden said. “If you look at all the athletes of the caliber he is, they could’ve been good in anything they played. Sometimes you have to pick.”