Bryce Mabe and his father, Jamie are helping coach the Carolina Disco Turkeys this summer

Jamie Mabe sees a familiar face when he looks across the baseball field from his coaching box at third base at David Couch Ballpark on game days for the Carolina Disco Turkeys..

His youngest son, Bryce, is standing in the coaching box at first base, giving instructions to baserunners.

They have taken their father-son baseball dynamic to a new level this summer as assistant coaches for the Disco Turkeys.

"It's a full circle kind of thing for me," Jamie Mabe said. "It's been fulfilling. I stand at third base and look across at him and just think, ‘wow.'

"That was me several years ago when I first got into coaching. It's exciting for me to see him help other people and see how they respect how much he knows."

Jamie Mabe was the first baseball coach at Reagan High School when it opened in 2005, a job he held for seven years before stepping away to pursue a career in administration. He is currently an assistant principal at Reagan. His resume also includes a playing career at South Stokes and Mount Olive College, and coaching stops at Augusta State and Young-Harris College, both in Georgia, and at Wake Forest from 2000-04 under George Greer.

Bryce Mabe recently wrapped up a two-year stint playing baseball at Surry Community College. He graduated from Atkins in 2024 and played baseball all four years. His coach at Atkins, Hunter Wolfington, is the head coach of the Disco Turkeys.

Bryce, who is interested in coaching in college or in high school now that his playing days are behind him, said that he asked Wolfington if he could help him out this summer.

"He told me I could coach first base if I could get the ‘big man' to coach third," Bryce Mabe said. "So I asked my dad and it was a pretty easy ‘yes' from him."

Other than helping coach Bryce's travel teams and the fall team for Atkins when Bryce played, Mabe hasn't been active in coaching since he stepped down at Reagan after the 2012 season. But this was an opportunity that he couldn't pass up.

"I jumped at the chance," Jamie Mabe said. "It's so rewarding to do this with him, and much different than if I were just in the stands watching him. We're both on the inside and get to share the dugout. He's definitely not scared to give his opinion, even if it's against mine when he thinks he's right."

Jamie Mabe paused and then added, "I think that's pretty cool, even though we know he's not right." followed by a wicked fatherly laugh.

Bryce Mabe thinks it's really cool, too.

"Having him as a coach my whole life and now being able to do this with him has been a lot of fun," Bryce Mabe said. "Pretty much everything I have learned about this game is because of him and my mom."

That would be Tabetha Mabe, a former college softball coach at Newberry in South Carolina and Augusta State, where she and Jamie met.

"Mike Elko (the current football coach at Texas A&M), when he was an assistant at Wake Forest, my wife and I coached his son on our Little League team," Jamie Mabe said. "We were sitting around the pool one day in the summer and he just out of the blue asked me, ‘How does it feel?'

"And so I asked him what he was talking about. And he said to me, ‘How does it feel to be the second best coach in your house?," Mabe said. "I'm used to it by now. And now, I may be the third best coach in my house."

The Disco Turkeys had a 16-game win streak as part of their 23-4 record this season in the Blue Ridge League, a wood-bat league for college baseball players.

Several of the players on the team are the same age as Bryce. He doesn't have any trouble offering his advice to them.

"I played with a few of them at Surry the last couple of years," Bryce Mabe said. "I'm the same age as most of them. I don't feel worried about speaking my mind to them. We're playing really well right now and my dad and I, we're just there to help them."

Jamie Mabe has been impressed by his son's leadership.

"It's a different dynamic for me, having coached him," Jamie Mabe said. "It's been eye-opening how much he knows about baseball as a coach and to have guys that are his age for the most part listening to him and respecting his knowledge. My wife is seeing how much he loves being around the game and helping other players. Baseball is always something that he has loved. This is a different way to experience it for all of us."

Bryce said that he played other sports growing up.

"I played basketball, tennis, volleyball, and then I broke my wrist my freshman year playing volleyball and missed baseball season," he said. "After that, I just wanted to focus on baseball."

Bryce got his feet wet in the coaching world a few summers ago when Jamey May, who coached at Atkins during the 2025 season, asked him to help coach a 13-and-under USA Prime travel team.

"He was always around the coaches at Atkins," Jamie Mabe said. "He was usually one of the only players who would ride the bus back after away games, and he'd always be talking to the coaches. And honestly, even when we were still coaching him in Little League, he was kind of like another assistant coach for us because he had that knowledge."

Bryce Mabe will head off to UNC Wilmington later this summer to finish college. He has already contacted a local high school to inquire about helping coach the baseball team next spring.

"I'm going down to meet with them soon to see if it's a good fit," he said. "It's been part of my life for as long as I remember. It's something I want to stay involved with and this is the path to do so for me. Whether I was playing, watching games on TV, and now coaching, I just enjoy the game so much."

That includes watching games on TV with his dad, or attending games in person at MLB stadiums.

"We've been to about a third of them and we want to visit all of them eventually," Bryce Mabe said. "I really enjoyed visiting the Pirates' stadium in Pittsburgh, Camden Yards in Baltimore, and of course Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. There is so much history at both of those places."

His favorite baseball movie is "Moneyball" and his favorite team is the Atlanta Braves.

"My dad usually just cheers for whichever team the Braves are playing," Bryce said with a laugh.

Bryce's father said that he enjoys seeing his son's passion in pursuing a career in baseball. He calls it "a comfortable path."

"His mom feels the same way. He is learning a lot and he understands that coaching is just about giving your team the best opportunity to win, and having the confidence and self-awareness to make those decisions, even if they don't always work out," Jamie Mabe said/ "This is something he wants to do and his mother and I are both excited to see where it takes him. And having this chance to coach with him this summer has been a blast."

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