Former Leon player leads Georgia team to high school title

By St. Clair Murraine

Outlook Staff Writer 

Omari Forts didn’t think much of having to get up in the wee hours to run a newspaper route when he was a high school senior at Leon. 

He just did it. But all these years later as a 43-year-old coach of the Tri-Cities basketball team, he’s still living by lessons that the early morning gig taught him. And, he’s passing it on to his players nowadays.

“I had to get up seven days a week, 365 days at 4:30 in the morning to go to work,” Forts said. “That work ethic has maintained the entire time I’ve been coaching.”

Forts played high school basketball at Leon. He didn’t play at the college level, instead going right into coaching while he was still a student at FAMU. He started as an assistant at his alma mater, then had a short stint at Jefferson County High School for his first head coaching job.

Forts could have gone anywhere to try his basketball talent after a coaching change at FAMU made it difficult for him to make the team. He had the grades as he studied the prerequisites to what has made him a forensic science teacher at Tri-Cities where he also was a biology and anatomy and physiology teacher.

Today Forts is being recognized as one of the most successful high school basketball coaches in Georgia, where he’s been for the last 16 years. Earlier this month, he led the Bulldogs to their second 5A state title in three seasons.

This by a team that had to overcome a COVID-19 outbreak last December. The team also endured a spell without two players who went down with foot injuries.

Forts’ phone has been ringing with offers to go elsewhere. He won’t budge, though.

“Right now I’m committed to where I am because I don’t feel the job is done,” Forts said.

Forts has the Bulldogs in a place that would make them the envy of most other coaches. They been to the playoffs seven consecutive years, eight of the last nine years. The team has also gotten to the elite eight during the last six years, won four consecutive regional titles and went to the final four in the state tournament the last four years. They won their first state title in 2019.

Forts has his players performing well in the classroom, too. He’s maintained a 100 percent graduation rate in the last seven years, sending 55 of them to college.

Success like that is what drives Forts, who had to overcome a few down years at Tri-Cities before hitting his stride.

“That’s the number one thing I’m proud of,” he said. “We are producing young men who are moving to the next level consistently.”

This season the Bulldogs were led by senior point guard Simeon Cottle, who averaged 25 points per game in the state tournament. He will be the next player moving on to play college ball and is already committed to Kennesaw State.

He will take with him a lot of what he learned from Forts, Cottle said. Most of all the confidence he’s gained as the one who runs the point.

“He puts trust in me to call up plays,” Cottle said. “He matured me and helped my game grow by putting me in position to call plays in big-game situations.”

Then, there is the mentoring that the players got.

“It really teaches us manners and how to respect people and how to respect each other,” Cottle said.

A few coaches have influenced what he is doing with his basketball program, Forts said. One of the first was Barry Taylor, a former coach at Florida High and Havana Northside. 

Their first encounter was at Dade Street Community Center, where a teenage Forts was working out with much older players. Taylor, whose son, Byron, played at FAMU, took Forts aside and offered him some advice.

It was the first of several similar conversations that they would have over the years. Forts has taken heed, which Taylor has noticed.

“Trying to mentor these boys is bigger than winning a game,” Taylor said. “Coaching is trying to mentor and be a positive influence in these young men’s lives. If these kids begin to understand that you care about them they will leave nothing on the floor.”