JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – One of the best high school baseball coaches in area history is heading south.
Trinity Christian’s Gil Morales accepted the head coaching position at Fort Lauderdale Calvary Christian on Monday, joining a progam that has won two state titles since 2016.
It's a different path for Morales, whose previous high school head coaching jobs were building, or rebuilding programs.
Morales, 43, is one of the most accomplished baseball coaches in area history. He won four state championships, three in a four-year period at Eagle’s View (2005 and ‘07-08), and later at Trinity (2015).
He is 20 victories away from reaching 300.
“Jacksonville has been home,” he said. “It was one of those things it kind of worked out that it was the right time to go. It’s hard though, leaving the relationships you have here. Trinity’s been so great to us. I loved everything about it. I’m eager to see who they hire.”
Morales has been a fixture on the First Coast for years. He transferred to UNF after playing at Hillsborough Community College and played with the Ospreys for a couple seasons. He coached at UNF in 1999 as a graduate assistant and spent three seasons after that at Florida State College at Jacksonville before landing his first head coaching job at Eagle’s View.
Morales left the area for three seasons for the top job at Windermere Prep before returning and helping rebuild the program at Trinity. He’s been to the state semifinals eight times in his career as a head coach.
He'll be in a completely different neck of the woods than he's been at in Jacksonville, and one that he's had to compete against for years.
“The south is a different monster than the north,” Morales said. “Jacksonville baseball people don’t realize the coaches in Jacksonville are really, really good. They’ve really developed their programs to be able to compete with those [south] teams over the years.”