Needing to find a baseball coach in a hurry, Porters Chapel Academy looked to its bench for a veteran to pinch-hit.

Wade Patrick, who coached the team in 2012 and 2013, will return to the dugout next spring. He’ll replace Chris Mixon, who resigned last week to take an assistant coaching position at Central Hinds.

Patrick has been PCA’s athletic director since stepping away from coaching, and he also served as an assistant to Mixon.

He said he and PCA headmaster Pam Wilbanks both felt the difficulty of finding a qualified coach now, when most are already locked into other jobs, made him the most logical candidate for the job.

“It was the timing,” Patrick said. “With school just starting back, Ms. Wilbanks asked if I’d be interested in it. I helped last year, so I really wasn’t away from it. I just felt that it was best that I take it back.”

Patrick went 19-15 in his previous stint as PCA’s head coach. In both seasons, the Eagles were on the wrong end of three-way tiebreakers and did not make the playoffs.

PCA finished 17-11 last season.

Patrick wasn’t yet sure whether he’ll be a one-year fill-in or take the job on a permanent basis.

“It was more of a right now type of deal. It might be something we’ll talk about,” Patrick said. “Our main concern was getting somebody filled in to that position.”

Patrick also coached PCA’s football team in the 2011 and 2012 seasons before moving into administration.

He cited the long hours required of coaches as the main reason he stepped away from coaching, but wasn’t as worried about that this time. Coaching one sport instead of two, as well as his time away over the past year, helped to recharge his batteries, he said.

“It was good to go home at 3:30 instead of 7:30. It’s a lot of little things like that,” he said. “With just doing the one (sport), I’ll be fine. The year off just freshens you mentally and physically.”