Rogers named new basketball coach at Prattville High School
Steve Rogers has been an assistant at Alabama State since 2005. He takes over at Prattville High School beginning this fall. (Contributed)
By TIM GAYLE
Steve Rogers has heard the talk over the years about Prattville High basketball, but he believes the Lions’ program has all the ingredients in place for a winning program.
And the potential meant more than the history to Rogers, who was named the new boys’ basketball coach by the Autauga County Board of Education on Thursday night.
“It’s one of those places that needs somebody that shares the passion of winning and gets that transferred down to the guys,” Rogers said. “I plan to change the mindset when it comes to basketball in Prattville.”
He isn’t the first person that has spoken in those terms. The school has been home to two coaches who won state championships at nearby Autaugaville (Bennie Lee Justiss in the mid-1980s and Calvin Hunter in 2005) and coaches who have been successful at other high schools, such as the coach Rogers is replacing, Scott Phillips. None have managed to have any meaningful success at Prattville High.
Ronald Harper followed Justiss in the late 1980s and the late Jack Schweers coached at Prattville for a year back in the mid-1990s before Barry Mohun took the Lions to the 6A semifinals in 1998 with regional victories over Hoover and Vestavia Hills.
Mohun would leave for the junior college ranks after Prattville’s state tournament appearance and is currently the headmaster at Lowndes Academy. Since his departure 22 years ago, the Lions have lost their first area tournament game 18 times, managing just four trips to the state playoffs.
The Lions lost sub-regional games to Jeff Davis in 2000 and 2011 and reached the regional semifinals before losing to Central-Phenix City in 2010 and 2016.
Prattville has two area tournament championships, both coming under Xavier Robinson in 2010 and 2011.
“I’m excited about the opportunity,” Rogers said. “Obviously, we need to get the mindset of the players into a mode of winning and try to encourage that culture. But there are a lot of things, which was surprising to me, that are already in place that a lot of other programs don’t have. And that attracted me to them.”
Rogers has served since 2005 as an assistant basketball coach at Alabama State under Lewis Jackson until Jackson announced his retirement in mid-March. That includes regular season Southwestern Athletic Conference titles in 2008 and 2009 and conference tournament titles in 2009 and 2011, the latter two earning berths in the NCAA Tournament.
He is quite familiar with the Lions’ program, having played for then-area rival Sidney Lanier in the mid-1980s. A deadly perimeter shooter, Rogers earned all-state honors and signed with Middle Tennessee out of high school, but transferred to Alabama State after one year and earned all-conference honors each of his remaining three years at ASU and SWAC Player of the Year honors as a junior and senior.
He finished as the third leading scorer in school history and was drafted in the second round of the 1992 NBA draft by the New Jersey Nets, but spent 11 years playing professional basketball overseas before returning to Montgomery to get into coaching at Alabama State.
His sons Steven and Austin would follow in his footsteps, earning accolades for their shooting ability at Brewbaker Tech before earning scholarships to play for the Hornets. Austin just completed his junior season with the Hornets.