Jerry Hunter, who led Westside High School to three straight state basketball titles, hopes to bring that magic to Grovetown this season. He emphasizes hard work in that quest for a team in one of the state’s toughest classifications.
Hunter took over from Darren Douglas who stepped down in the 2025 offseason after four years at Grovetown. Douglas led the Warriors to a 6A basketball State Championship during the 2021-22 season.
In addition to Westside’s three titles in 2022, 2023 and 2024, Hunter won one title during his tenure at Laney.
While Hunter has had a lot of coaching success, he faces the new challenge of coaching in the state’s largest classification— Class AAAAAA. The grouping features many nationally ranked programs that Grovetown will plays in region competition each season.
“The biggest struggle has been the physicality part and trying to get the guys to be physical,” Hunter said. “Coming from 2A and understanding DNA. 2A the DNA was a lot tougher than 6A. We are struggling with now the DNA component.”
Grovetown is currently 13-7 overall and 3-4 in its region. The Warriors fell 45-43 in their game against Archer High School on Friday, Jan. 23.
They are led by senior Amare Pryce who ranks first for Grovetown and is second in Class AAAAAA with 20.2 points per game. Pryce struggled Friday evening finishing with only 7 points.
“He has carried us and when he struggles, we struggle,” Hunter said. “When he gets down on himself, he can struggle with scoring the ball, and we are trying to make him understand that he can be a decoy, but at the same time the defensive side of the ball is where you have to impact the game.”
Although Friday’s game ended a loss, Hunter emphasized the importance on learning from losses and getting better each game.
“We struggled shooting the ball tonight,” Hunter said. “I call it working and learning in this phase versus winning and losing. 20 games into the season, five guys transfer, and you get guys in roles they’ve never been in. Unfortunately, we learn a lot from losses, but the lessons must become blessings.”
Grovetown basketball and Hunter both have hopes of returning and winning another state title in the future, but it will come with a lot of hard work.
“I want to continue to teach the game,” Hunter said. “A lot of the guys are products of the environment and the social media environment. The environment I am apart is the hard work. These guys want the dessert, but they don’t want to deal with the main course and that is the work. Championship is the dessert. The recipe is the same, but the ingredients have changed and right now we are struggling with the ingredients.”
Grovetown will look to get back on track at home against Heritage on Tuesday, Jan. 27. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
Sportswriter Christopher Rickerson is an Augusta University graduate who has covered area sports for publications including Augusta University‘s Bell Ringer, The Augusta Press and Augusta Good News. Subscribe to the Augusta Good News’ free weekly newsletter here.
