Wayne Vickery: Gainesville High School

Vickery was inducted into the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame in 2000.

Wayne Vickery led one of the state’s great baseball dynasties from 1996-2002 when he led Gainesville High School to five championships in a seven-year span, including back-to-back-to-back titles from 1996-1998.

He retired after the 2008 season with a 470-128 record. He spent most of his career in Gainesville. The Hartwell native who attended the University of Georgia started his baseball coaching career in 1978 at Madison County.

According to the Gainesville Times, Vickery met legendary Gainesville football coach Bobby Gruhn at a golf tournament in the spring of 1980. Gruhn asked Vickery if he would be interested in teaching biology. Vickery taught biology and coached the baseball team until 2008.

He stayed on as the athletic director at the school until 2015.

His Gainesville teams won 20 or more games 17 times and he made the state playoffs 18 of his 20 seasons. The Red Elephants also made nine appearances in the state semifinals. More than 65 of his former players played collegiately and professionally.

He is a member of the Georgia Dugout Club Hall of Fame, the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Northeast Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the National Sunbelt Classic Hall of Fame in 2012.

Vickery was the National Coach of the Year in 2001.

In 2020, the school retired his No. 18 jersey.

He was just as respected as an athletic director, hiring some of the state’s top coaches.

"He is Gainesville High athletics," former football coach Bruce Miller told Accesswdun. "He is just Big Red through and through."

Vickery is proud of his success as a coach and as the athletic director.

"My biggest thrill was winning that first state baseball title in 1996," Vickery said. "The next was finally getting over the hump to win that first state championship in football (in 2012). I think that healed a lot of frustrations when we were finally able to accomplish that."

Some information in this article was used from The Gainesville Times and AccessWDUN.