News Staff Report
The Alabama Baseball Coaches Association (ALABCA) will pay tribute to one of its late members, former Coastal Alabama Community College (CACC) baseball coach Darrell “Dobie” Blevins, during the association’s upcoming awards banquet.
Blevins, who died in August 2021, will be announced as winner of the 2023 ALABCA Distinguished Service Award during the group’s annual banquet and awards ceremony, to be held Friday, December 9, at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham. The event is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
Tickets are limited and must be purchased by December 4, while they’re available. They can be purchased online at alabca.org.
Blevins began his coaching career as a volunteer and held that role at Robert E. Lee High School, Faulkner University, and Auburn University Montgomery.
He joined the Wallace State Community College staff in 1997, and a year later was hired as fitness center coordinator, business teacher and assistant baseball coach at Alabama Southern Community College.
He served in those roles until 2002, when he became assistant baseball coach at Faulkner State Community College, where he coached from 2003 to 2005. The school’s baseball team won back-to-back state championships his first two years there, and Blevins was honored as ALABCA Assistant Coach of the Year in 2005.
That same year, he became head baseball coach and Microcomputer Applications instructor at Jefferson Davis Community College, which later became CACC. Blevins was preparing for his 16th season as coach of the CACC Brewton campus Warhawks at the time of his death.
He coached within all three of the athletic departments that make up Coastal Alabama — at the campuses in Brewton, Bay Minette, and Monroeville. More than 90 of the players he coached went on to play at a higher level, including several who were drafted by Major League Baseball teams.
Mary Beth Lancaster, CACC’s Dean of Academic Instruction, worked beside Blevins for several years.
“Students enjoyed taking his courses and always had a good experience with him, and his players really thought a lot of him as well,” Lancaster said shortly after the coach’s death. “He was more than someone who coached his players on the skills of the game; he taught them to be good, solid young men. That was a gift he had, and he’s definitely going to be missed.”