Mike McLaury, who has spent the past 14 seasons as baseball coach at Independence, has accepted a similar position at Oakland. McLaury will be the successor to Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Famer Mack Hawks, who won 760 games and two state titles in 37 years atop the Patriots. FILE PHOTO

Mike McLaury recently joined a very short list.

Since its opening in 1972, Oakland High School in Murfreesboro has had just two baseball coaches – Jack Jolly, who put the first 17 Patriot teams on the diamond before his 1988 retirement, and Mack Hawks, who’s led the last 37.

McLaury, who has spent the previous 13 years at Independence, announced earlier this week he’ll be the third, following Hawks’ retirement at the conclusion of the 2026 season.

“I grew up with Jack Jolly coaching them, and when I was at (Middle Tennessee State), Jack was (scouting) with the White Sox. We’d go see games together,” McLaury recalled. “We’d take his Lincoln and drive all over Tennessee.

“Coach Hawks, I don’t know how many years he was there. I don’t want to guess. … The tradition’s there. They’ve got great facilities.”

And in a couple of years, they’ll have McLaury’s son, Judd, a rising eighth-grader at Oakland Middle School.

“Oakland High School is about 10 minutes from his house,” Independence athletics director Mary Beth White said. “The move was more for his family than anything.

“We’re very excited for Mike, but very sad for Independence. He did way, way more than coach baseball here. There’s so much stuff that he did behind the scenes for all of our programs, for the school as a whole, and he’s been a great friend. Oakland is definitely getting the good end of the deal, and we’ll just have to get to work to find our next baseball coach.”

A 2014 Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame inductee, Hawks won 760 games over his career at Oakland, leading the Patriots to consecutive state championships in 1999 and 2000 – the latter team ranked sixth nationally by Baseball America after finishing 40-3. Oakland made five other state tournament appearances and 13 sectionals, with seven region championships and nine district titles.

At Independence, McLaury succeeded founding Eagles coach Bill Moore upon his departure for Brentwood in 2013. Under McLaury’s leadership, the program made state tournament appearances in 2019, 2023 and 2025.

“There’s not a bad decision,” he said regarding the two programs. “It’s just tough. There’s great people at Independence. (Principal) Niki Patton, Trae Weiss, the rest of the admin there – they’re unbelievable. They helped me out a lot. We had some good times there, made some really good friends.

“There’s a good group of guys there, good players. It’s hard. I don’t get choked up too much, but it was hard to hold it back with those guys. I’m just kinda excited to see what we can do at Oakland.”