Long-time Mount de Sales coach, administrator Pierce dies
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
If there was a Mount Rushmore for Mount de Sales athletics, it’d be hard to leave Chester Pierce off of it.
From winning state titles in baseball and softball to service in administration for decades at his alma mater, Pierce was all about Mount de Sales.
Current Stratford head soccer coach Iain Jones, right, was head soccer coach and assistant athletics director at Mount de Sales and worked for several years with Pierce.
Photo: Iain Jones/Facebook
The Cavalier community is mourning his death Saturday after a long illness.
The 1966 graduate was in his late 70s. On Friday, January 24th, the Rosary will be held at 5 p.m. at Snow's Memorial Chapel on Bass Rd.
Saturday, January 25th, the funeral mass will be held at 11 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church.
No obituary had been posted as of Monday evening.
Pierce – also the assistant head of school for more than three decades - helped the Cavaliers win a state baseball championship in 1966, two years after the then-girls school went co-ed. It was the school’s first such title out of seven in the GHSA, three with Pierce as head coach.
He earned a scholarship at Mercer, and returned to Mount de Sales after graduation and was the Cavs’ baseball coach for 29 years.
Mount de Sales won 10 region titles and was state runner-up three times with three state titles.
Pierce was also an assistant football coach under another Mount de Sales legend, Mike Garvin. And he was a successful softball coach at Mount de Sales, the Cavs winning a GISA state title in 1985.
He was part of the school’s first athletics hall of fame class in 2008. The 1993 Alumnus of the Year was inducted into the Macon Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.
The baseball facility at Cavalier Fields on Cavalier Drive was named after Pierce in 2016. The school established the Chester W. Pierce Distinguished Service Award a few years ago in honor of his 37 years of service at the school.
