You won’t find Jeff Mauldin’s name near the top of the Alabama High School Athletic Association records for most wins for a high school baseball coach. You won’t find it anywhere on the list, as a matter of fact, for a pretty simple reason: The two-time state champion hasn’t reported his victories to the AHSAA.

Consider this a report. Mauldin picked up his 700th win on Tuesday as his 5-3 Hewitt-Trussville squad beat his former team, Pelham, 11-0 at home as Christian Helmers threw a no-hitter at Phil English Field.

Mauldin is the sixth – and youngest – AHSAA coach to hit the 700-win milestone. According to the AHSAA through the 2023 season, William Booth of Hartselle leads the list with 1,185 wins in 36 years. William Murrell’s 910 is second in 50 years at Athens Bible, followed by Richard Patterson’s 893 in 40 years, most recently at Hueytown; Ken Whittle’s 783 at Trinity in 41 years; and Benjamin Russell’s Richy Brooks’ 711 in 34 years (through the 2023 season). Whittle and Brooks are the only members of the group besides Mauldin who are still coaching. Mauldin’s career record is 700-217-1 and winning 76.3 percent of his games puts him No. 1 among the 700 Club.

“Honestly, I didn’t think that much about it until a few weeks ago when it was brought to my attention,” said Mauldin, who won state titles at Clay-Chalkville in 2003 and at Hewitt in 2016. “A friend sent me a spreadsheet with the coaches on the AHSAA website. I’m not on there because I never really turned it in.

“It’s very humbling to be mentioned with the guys on there. It’s surreal and a little bit overwhelming with what our program has been able to do.”

Mauldin is 306-104-1 with Hewitt-Trussville, where he’s coached since 2013. He was 176-51 at Pelham from 2007-12 and 218-62 at Clay-Chalkville (2000-06), where he started his varsity head coaching career. Besides his two titles, Mauldin’s teams at Hewitt finished second in 2013, 2018 and in 2022. He had second-place finishes in 2005 and 2006 at Clay. He also reached the final four nine times with 15 area championships in 24 years.

Three of his players have been chosen in the Major League Baseball draft – Grayson Jones in the 11th round by Atlanta (2015), Tyler Tolbert in the 13th by Kansas City (2019) and Carson Skipper in the 11th by Colorado (2022). So far, 120 of Mauldin’s former players have played collegiately.

When alerted to the 700th on the horizon, Mauldin said his first thought was family.

“I immediately started thinking about my wife, Chrissy. She’s been there for every game throughout my career. I thought about my three kids: my son, Ty, my daughters, Sara Grace and Caroline. They love the game of baseball and all three of them are ultra-competitive. The sacrifices they all made to allow me to do what I love to do … I think God blessed me with an unbelievable wife and family to be 100 percent all-in for what we do.”

Mauldin’s immediate family isn’t the only family that came to his mind.

“I thought of my assistant coach, Jeff Schrupp, who has been with me every year of my 27 years of teaching,” the 50-year-old said. “We taught together the past 26 years and have coached together for my 25 years as a head varsity coach,” he said. “Our wives joke that we are like a married couple. We don’t really have to talk – we know what each other is thinking. I appreciate him and his friendship and what we do together. He could be the head coach and I could be the assistant and nothing would change with our program.”

Mauldin credited some well-known coaches for helping to form his philosophy that has resulted in an average of 28 wins a year.

“Jim Case was my pitching coach at UAB,” he said of the 41-year veteran of Division I coaching who retired last season after 22 years leading Jacksonville. “He is probably my No. 1 mentor, giving me my base and foundation at a higher level. A lot of the things I do now in 2024 are things I learned from him when I played at UAB in the early ‘90s. He’s like a second dad to me and a lot of my philosophy came from him.

“Sammy Dunn, who was at Vestavia Hills for so long, took me under his wing when I was a first- or second-year coach at Clay-Chalkville. Nobody knew he was mentoring me. I would go to Vestavia and he would sit and talk to me and he taught me so much – details of the game, what needed to be done at the high-school level. Not a lot of people know that.

“Dick Steed, the coach at Shades Valley, helped me a lot when I was a younger coach.”

Among the things Mauldin said he picked up from Dunn, who died at 52 in 2004 after leading the Rebels to 11 state championships and 647 victories, was an emphasis on improving through practice without an all-consuming desire to win games. Dunn was known to schedule fewer games than the maximum allowed by the AHSAA and to spend extra time on practice.

“I think our kids know we care about them,” Mauldin said. “We’re really going to work hard. One of our goals is to outwork our opponents, whether we’re practicing or lifting weights, we want to be the hardest-working team there is. Our belief is if we put in the time, we work and prepare, when the kids get to the game, they are 100 percent confident they are prepared to win the game.

“I don’t think that we have ever played a full schedule that the state allots for us to play. This year, I think that number is 32 or 36 and we have 31 games scheduled. I know it sounds funny because we’re talking about wins, but I’m not so much worried about wins. I’m not going to chase wins. Teams used to play three games on a Saturday and a lot of double-headers, but we’ve never done that. I think practice is way more important.”

As many veteran high school coaches attest, Mauldin said preparing ballplayers for life off the diamond is the reason he goes to school every day.

“One of the biggest things is forming a relationship with players,” he said. “Some people use ‘relationships’ as a catchphrase, but it’s the truth. Our kids know we care about them and they play harder for you.

“When you see a former player or they send you a text or call, you know you’ve made an impact in that young man’s life. We want to impact them forever. The game of baseball is going to end for everybody at some point and I’m just blessed to make an impact.

“One of my favorite days at Hewitt-Trussville, several years ago, Spencer Jones who played for me at Clay-Chalkville showed up at our practice with his newborn son, just like 2 days old. He said, ‘I just wanted you to see my son.’ It blew us away. He was coming home and he stopped by the field to show us his baby boy. That’s awesome.

“He still comes by today and his son is now running around the field like crazy.

“Tyler Page was on our 2003 state championship team at Clay-Chalkville. I looked up and he’s down the right-field line watching us play. He graduated 23 years ago at Clay, but he lives in Trussville and watches us play. It makes you feel like you’ve made an impact in their life.”

After wrapping up Win No. 700, Mauldin received a tangible memento of his impact. Hewitt officials prepared for the occasion with a surprise for the coach.

“They presented me with a box of 700 letters from former players, students, coaches and peers,” he said. “I didn’t open it right then. I got up at 4 o’clock in the morning and read two letters and started to cry. I got a letter from my daughter and one from a former student at Pelham, who was a Diamond Doll for us.

“The letter from my daughter was private, but the letter from the Diamond Doll at Pelham was an example of you never knowing who is watching you. She was very close to our program and she was saying how much she appreciated me and my wife, showing them as Diamond Dolls what marriage looked like. What a relationship looked like. Now, she’s married and expecting her first baby. You just don’t know.

“I read two and had to stop. My wife asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I told her, ‘I can’t read them. It’s so overwhelming.’ I just thank God that I’m truly, truly blessed, not just in my career, but in life.”