For five years, Scott Myers sat in the Flowery Branch dugout and waited for his chance to lead the Falcons.

He finally got that opportunity when longtime coach Jimmy Lawler retired at the end of the 2010 season, and based on his first season, it would be hard to imagine anyone else heading up the baseball program anytime soon.

Myers went 17-8 and led the Falcons to the Class AAAA state playoffs this season, successfully turning around a program that went 5-20 in Lawler’s final season. Because of that, Myers is The Times Baseball Coach of the Year.

“I can’t put my finger on what happened,” said Myers, who had longed to be a head baseball coach since he first got into education. “The transition from one coach to the next is not easy, but sometimes you need a little change in personalities.”

And boy does Myers have a unique personality.

A fiery coach who holds nothing back, Myers was once so distraught after a loss this year that the Falcons’ trainer had to come over and make sure he wasn’t going to pass out. He tried to blame an illness for his postgame issues, but to anyone in attendance, it clearly showed that he was frustrated in a team that just lost its third game in a row after winning six straight.

That loss also impacted Flowery Branch’s playoff hopes, as the team needed to travel to Rockdale County for a play-in series that decided whether or not the Falcons would reach the Class AAAA tournament — their goal from the beginning of the season.

“You have to set your expectations high,” Myers said. “If you don’t as a head coach, then you can’t expect the kids to do the same. You have to expect yourself to be successful and the kids have to expect success.”

But even Myers is a little surprised at how much success the team had this year.

“I’d be foolish to say no,” he said. “The good thing about kids is they have a short memory — they didn’t remember last year.”

That was obvious from the beginning of the year when Flowery Branch won eight of its first nine games, with the only loss coming to Class AAAAA Mountain View in the third game of the year.

Behind solid pitching and an offense that averaged eight runs per game, the Falcons went 14-3 before ending the year on a three-game losing streak. A sweep of Rockdale County in the play-in series sent the Falcons on the road for the first round of the playoffs, which they lost to Dunwoody in two games.

“We’ve got to get better defensively; that’s got to be the focus this offseason,” Myers said. “That’s what put us out against Dunwoody.”

The good news is the Falcons will have plenty of experienced players working on those issues over the summer and in the fall, as the team is losing only two position players — catcher and third base — who started last year.

“We should be in good shape,” said Myers, who will also welcome back the majority of his pitching staff as well. “We just have to put the pieces together and pick up where we left off.”