Former ACA star Taylor pegged to lead Catholic baseball
After prepping at Alabama Christian Academy and a career at Alabama and in the MiLB, Chandler Taylor returns to Montgomery to coach the Knights of Cathollic. (Photo contributed)
By TIM GAYLE
Catholic officials wasted no time in finding a replacement for former head baseball coach Allen Ponder, choosing former Alabama Christian Academy standout Chandler Taylor as the Knights’ new skipper.
“I’ve known him his whole life,” Catholic athletic director Daniel Veres said. “This is something he’s been talking about for the last few years so when the opportunity came up, we made a conscious decision to hire somebody who wanted to be the coach at Catholic. I’m not saying Allen didn’t want to be the coach, but I know the competitor that Chandler is and his love for the game and teaching it.”
The summer schedule delayed the announcement nearly a month so Taylor hasn’t had an opportunity to meet with the players yet. The former University of Alabama standout will become the third Catholic baseball coach in as many years.
“I do believe if there’s anybody that can relate to them, I certainly can,” Taylor said, “because I played for three head coaches in three years at Alabama. And I think the best way I know how to combat that is to go in there from day one and let them know they are as much my guys as players who, five years down the road, have been with me every step of the way. Just because I’m a first-year coach and they’ve been with three coaches in three years doesn’t mean they’re any less my players. This is our team and that’s going to be very clear from my opening meeting with them.”
Ponder stepped down from the position in late May to accept a position as the head baseball coach at Pike Liberal Arts, where his children attend school.
“Life happens,” Veres said. “This is not major college baseball. When you live somewhere and you get an opportunity to coach somewhere that you don’t have to drive -- he was driving 45 minutes one way -- it was really the fit for life. He’s got two small kids and now he doesn’t have to come to Montgomery and spend all of his day. I wish him the best and we’ll go about our business with the next coach and doing the things we have to do to be the best program we can be.”
Taylor, 30, graduated from Alabama Christian Academy in 2015 and went to Alabama on a baseball scholarship to play outfield for Mitch Gaspard in 2016, Greg Goff in 2017 and Brad Bohannon in 2018. He was drafted in the 10th round of the Major League draft by the Houston Astros after the 2018 season and spent three years in the Astros’ minor league system before retiring from baseball.
Taylor will not teach at the school and will continue to serve as a realtor in the private sector. This is his first job as a coach.
“This is not something I saw coming,” he said, referring to Ponder’s decision to leave the school after just one year. “There were some things in the works when this came about and the timing just ended up being really good.
“I feel like the last three years or so, it’s been a little bit of an itch that needs to be scratched. When I was finished playing, I had really no interest in doing it. I coached an 11-year-old travel team for a couple of summers and had a lot of fun with those kids, but I still didn’t have any desire to coach in high school. I think the last couple of years, it’s just been something that lingered, but I wasn’t going to jump into it in just any capacity.”
Interesting enough, Taylor will become the third consecutive Catholic baseball coach who was a former University of Alabama baseball player, joining Ponder and Chandler Avant. And while it is his first job as a high school coach, he said his lack of experience shouldn’t hamper his relationship with the players.
“The best managers I played for in college, summer ball and pro ball, any time there was an interaction, those guys made it feel as if there was no divide, no experience gap, no age gap,” Taylor said. “It was more of let’s get in the trenches together and figure out what’s going on instead of being like a superior figure. It was more like we’re wearing the same jersey, we’re going to be pulling in the same direction.
“I think those guys I played for have a lot to do with why I want to get into coaching is because I don’t think there’s enough of that in today’s game. I really think the players are capable of a lot more than a lot of amateur coaches give them credit for. If we do less telling and more asking, then you get to the answer a lot quicker and you make the players feel more comfortable that they can give the answer that they actually believe in.”