Shaun Morrison wasn't ready to make this jump before now.

As a teacher and head baseball coach at McCracken Middle School, Morrison was busy earning an advanced degree in adminsitration and working toward National Board Certification. He wanted to be a varsity baseball coach, just not yet.

The vacancy at Battery Creek High School was a naural progression. Morrison this week accepted the Dolphins' head baseball job and will assume the role of adminsitrative intern, filling both vacancies left by former coach Dan Tooman.

Morrison played college baseball at Western Michigan. He played in various independent leagues in Germany, South Africa, Australia and the United States before settling into an assistant high school coaching role in Florida.

The 32-year-old Morrison is still prone to the pull of travel, recently packing on a whim and driving to the Florida Keys before heading to Atlanta to take in a Braves game and hike Stone Mouintain. He said he is ready to settle in his new role and that he had talked to Battery Creek athletics director John Drafts about how he might continue to coach once a full-time adminsitrator.

"We're figuring out a way to make that happen," Morrison said. "My goal is to move into adminsitration. I do want to build a program. I kind of want to continue Coach Tooman's success he had and maybe even round a corner and put together a year-in-year-out, playoff-contending team."

To do that will require getting on the same page with the recreation program and middle school, establishing expectations from the top, Morrison said.

"We've got to have kids in the program knowing what they're doing," he said. "I want to instill a good work ethic, build a program based on character-- a high-character, high-value program. I want my players to be better players when they're done, but also better people."

Tooman coached the Dolphins five seasons before resigning to become an assistant principal at Beaufort High School. Tooman was also an administrative intern at Battery Creek and led the school's Tri-Academy program. Like Morrison, he recently completed his graduate degree.

Tooman's tenure included working in the fall baseball program. Now Morrison wants to build.

"I want people to say, 'He's doing things right,'" Morrision said. "'He's working across all components of a baseball program. He's involving the community. He's running things fairly. And he's winning.'"