Georgia honors former baseball coach David Perno on team’s Lettermen Day
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Georgia baseball’s annual celebration of its glorious past on Saturday afternoon featured a special man who played for and coached the Bulldogs.
That’s the college baseball life that David Perno has lived, and for all that he’s achieved in a Dawgs uniform he was honored with the Charley Trippi Distinguished Letterman Award before Saturday’s home game against SEC rival Mizzou. The Trippi Letterman Award is presented to a Georgia legend in recognition of that person’s “generous support, interest and special commitment to Georgia baseball.”
The award is presented annually to a former student-athlete who excelled on the field and has taken that experience into his post-playing life. Perno hasn’t just done that in general, he’s done it at Georgia. Because after being a 3-year letterman in Athens as well as being a member of Georgia’s 1990 national championship team, Perno had a second act in Athens as a coach.
He returned there in 1997 as an assistant baseball coach under Robert Sapp and Ron Polk before taking over as head coach in 2002. All Perno did during his 12-year run as head coach at Georgia was lead the Dawgs to 2 SEC titles and 3 College World Series appearances while twice being named SEC Coach of the Year.
So, Perno tasted plenty of success at Georgia as both a player and coach, and he’s also analyzed the college game for ESPN and SEC Network.
Since the end of 2015, Perno has ventured into yet another sporting life in the area, as a teacher and head football coach at his high school alma mater, Clarke Central in Athens. He’s led the program to multiple region titles as well as the state playoffs. Perno was an all-state running back on the school’s 1985 state championship team.
Georgia is trying to continue its drive this spring to get to Omaha in June, where it hopes to be playing for a national championship. Here is what the Kalshi odds are currently saying for the Bulldogs and other top teams in the mix to be playing for everything next month:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
