Grooms leaves Lakeside for Wayne County

By GHSF Daily Staff

For the AJC

Jody Grooms, the coach who led Lakeside of Evans to its first No. 1 seed in the state playoffs as Region 3-AAAA champion, is headed to Wayne County to replace Mark Daniel as head coach.

Grooms was 3-7, 7-3 and 10-2 at Lakeside, which had not had a winning season since 2000 or a playoff victory since 1992. Grooms was the Augusta Chronicle's area coach of the year in 2009.

Grooms' career at Lakeside was troubled in its first season, when Grooms came under fire for running an illegal play late in the final game, a 7-0 loss to Effingham County. The play, which called for a player to run onto the field from the sidelines to catch a pass, didn't work, but it resulted in a two-game suspension for Grooms in 2008.

Grooms recovered from the controversy and won over a community that was hungry for football success.

"I've left a couple of other places before, but it didn't sting like this one," Grooms told WJBF-TV in this report. "It was a tough decision to make."

Before coming to Lakeside, Grooms had been coach at Anson County in North Carolina, where one of his former players was Georgia lineman Trinton Sturdivant.

Grooms will inherit a program that has struggled in a similar way at Wayne County, which has not won a playoff game since 1996. Wayne is 6-34 the past four seasons, including 4-16 under Daniel.

Grooms also will be Wayne County's athletics director.

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