BLYTHEWOOD – The Blythewood baseball team welcomes a familiar face to lead the program after 3-year head coach Travis Poole announced he was leaving to take the A.C. Flora head coaching job.
Dolan Crolley, who previously served as assistant under former head coach Banks Faulker at Blythewood High School, was hired as head coach last week. When Faulkner left for an assistant position at Newberry College, Crolley was named interim head coach and guided the Bengals to the 2023 state baseball championship series. Crolley’s hire is pending approval of the school board.
“It was just one of those things,” Crolley said. “I knew Coach Poole announced he was leaving, and I thought, if I had the opportunity, I’d at least like to look into it. I talked to my players at White Knoll and said it wasn’t in the plans to leave, but this opportunity arose to come back where I got the chance to be a head coach, and it felt right.”
That opportunity arose when A.C. Flora head coach Andy Hallett announced that he was leaving the team after 29 years. Hallett led the Falcons to eight state championships, the most recent coming in late May when Flora bested defending 4A champion Airport 2-0 in the best-of-three game championship series.
Hallett’s leaving to take over the baseball team at Midlands STEM charter school in Winnsboro created the opening that Coach Poole eventually took. Poole was 70-21 with the Bengals after winning 463 games and a pair of state championships at Weddington High School in North Carolina.
Under Crolley in 2023, the Bengals were 21-7-1, won the 3-5A region championship, and survived the playoffs to face River Bluff for the 5A state championship series. The Gators won that series 2-0 to claim the first baseball state title in the school’s short history.
After the season Crolley put in for the permanent head coaching job with the Bengals, but he said there were no hard feelings when Athletic Director Barry Mizzell opted for Poole’s coaching experience instead.
“Me and him talked, but I knew I was still young in my coaching years and there was not any hard feelings at the end of the day,” Crolley said. “I was able to coach at Lugoff-Elgin and then take a second step in coaching at White Knoll. Honestly I think it helped set me in the direction I was headed.”
Crolley took an assistant job with Lugoff-Elgin in 2024, then was hired to coach a White Knoll team that was more than a decade removed from success on the diamond.
In his first year with the Timberwolves Crolley had a team heavy with freshman and just four seniors. They finished 7-22 and went winless in Region 4-5A play. The next year Crolley brought in more experienced players and spent time coaching up the younger players who remained on the team. This spring the Timberwolves went 10-15 overall and the 5-5 region mark was the best region record since 2016.
While Crolley’s hometown is Sumter—he helped the city’s 13-year-old all-star baseball team win the Junior Dixie Boys World Series in Muscle Shoals, Ala., back in 2007—The Sumter High graduate who played ball at USC-Lancaster said his return to Blythewood baseball is something like a homecoming.
“I know a lot about the players,” he said. “The guys that were seniors this year were freshmen when I was the interim coach. Those guys who were in eighth grade when I coached are still there. I still know a lot of the players.”
Crolley said he is looking to have a player-parents meet-and-greet in the next couple of weeks.