Byron Orr
Orr, Byron: Forsyth County Schools
Orr was inducted into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame in 2025.
The phone call from Georgia Dugout Club Executive Director David McDonald seemed a bit unusual for Byron Orr.
“The call sort of came from left field,” Orr said. “I had no idea. I was outside and carried my phone with me. I usually don’t talk to Coach McDonald on a regular basis.”
McDonald wanted to tell Orr, one of the architects of Forsyth County’s successful baseball and softball programs, that he would be one of six inductees into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2025.
“I had told somebody that if you stay in it long enough, something good will happen,” Orr said. “I don’t really think about stuff like that, but it’s a big honor. There’s a lot of good people in there. To me, it’s a big deal.”
Of Forsyth County’s six high schools, Orr has spent time at three of them – Forsyth Central, North Forsyth and West Forsyth. Of Forsyth County’s two state baseball titles, Orr guided North Forsyth to one of them in 1998 (Lambert won the other in 2014).
His resume is impressive. As a head baseball coach at Forsyth Central, North Forsyth and West Forsyth, he combined to win more than 240 games in 19 seasons. He also took North Forsyth to a state runner-up finish in 1997.
He was named State Coach of the Year by the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association in 1998 as well as Georgia Dugout Club Class A Coach of the Year in 1997.
Orr also coached softball for 12 seasons at North Forsyth and West Forsyth where he combined to win 278 games. He took North Forsyth to back-to-back state softball titles in 1997-98 and was named GACA Coach of the Year both of those seasons.
The longtime coach said he just wanted Forsyth County’s high school baseball and softball programs to be relevant.
“When I started, I did the JV for my first five years,” he said. “We had some good athletes who played baseball, but baseball wasn’t taken seriously.”
Orr’s teams competed in regions with more-established metro baseball programs from Gwinnett and Cobb Counties. His teams worked hard, playing the best teams during spring and continuing to sharpen their skills in the summer working on fundamentals. Finally, his teams reached a point where they could compete.
“It wasn’t always easy, but we did get to a point where we go head-to-head with many of them,” he said. “We didn’t always come out on top, but we competed with them.”
Orr worked his team’s hard, but his main focus was to get his players to believe in his system.
“If I could ever get them to believe in what we were doing was the right thing, they would be successful,” he said. “It wasn’t always about winning, although you had to be successful or you would get moved out. But it was about covering the little details.”
In a little more than three decades, North Forsyth has had only two head baseball coaches – Orr and current coach Jim Cahill, whom Orr hired as his assistant in 2001.
“He definitely made my transition to Georgia a lot easier,” Cahill said. “He’s a big baseball coach and you could see right away he was in it for the kids. He’s been all over the county doing good stuff. He also started the program at West Forsyth and laid the foundation for their current success.”
Orr’s accomplishments don’t stop on the baseball and softball diamond. He’s helped more than 45 baseball players go on to the next level. He was named Forsyth County’s Teacher of the Year in 2001-02.
He is the founder of the Lanier Officials Association and a member of the North Forsyth High School Hall of Fame.