The 11th-ranked Prattville Christian Academy girls basketball team is enjoying yet another successful season under longtime head coach Jason Roberson, having just won the Area 5 Championship in Class 4A. They’ll now start their playoff run toward what Panthers fans hope will be a third straight state championship.
Just don’t call it a chance at a three-peat, says Roberson.
“Our last two state championships were in 3A. We are in 4A now, so I tell everyone that it would actually be our first,” he says, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
And don’t think Roberson is counting his chickens just yet. He’s been around the game far too long to know better. His 2020 team went 30-3 but lost in the regional playoffs. The following year his Panthers won just 28 games but captured their first of those two straight state titles.
Roberson has served as the Prattville Christian Academy girls coach for 21 straight seasons, arriving at the school straight out of Faulkner College, where he played under Jim Sanderson, son of the legend Wimp Sanderson. He also coaches the Panthers boys basketball team, having assumed those duties 11 years ago. While Roberson feels the boys team is ready to make some noise themselves in the next year or two, with all but one senior returning, all the attention is on the Prattville Christian girls right now, and they’ve earned it.
Roberson tells how from the very beginning, PCA has taken baby steps to get to where it is now. He was hired in the program’s second year of existence.
“We were so small back then, and were a part of the Southern States Athletic Conference, which was an association of very small private schools,” he explains.
PCA would slowly make its way into the Alabama Independent Schools Association, or AISA, before finally moving into the Alabama High School Sports Association, or AHSSA, in the 2012-2013 season as a member of Class 2A. With Roberson at the helm, and star player Kristen Emerson leading the Panthers on the court, the Prattville Christian Academy girls found immediate success, going undefeated all the way to the state final game, where they lost to Woodland High’s Bobcats. Emerson went on to play four seasons for the Troy University women’s basketball team.
Roberson says the team went through some ups and downs from that point, as they tried to introduce the younger students to basketball around the third and fourth grade levels. In 2019 things began to come together, not only for the girls but for the boys basketball program as well.
“We really started this run with the girls in 2019, but that same year our boys and girls both made the final four,” Roberson says. “That was the first time our boys had made it to the final four, and the first time since 2013 our girls had made it back there [o the final four].”
The Prattville Christian Academy girls girls team has been on a roll ever since. The 2019 final four team finished with a 25-9 record before being ousted by eventual state champion Pisgah. The next season saw the PCA girls finish with a 30-3 record, but they were upset in the region tournament by the TR Miller High Lady Tigers from Brewton.
In 2021 PCA claimed its first of two consecutive state championships with a 28-6 season culminating with a victory over Sylvania in the Class 3A state title game. Last season, Roberson’s Panthers roared to a 36-1 season and another 3A championship, this time over Susan Moore High School.
PCA is led by two seniors that Roberson affectionately refers to as “the Twin Towers.” They are seniors Hannah Jones and Co Co Thomas.
“Hannah is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, and CoCo is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, and they have been leading us for a while,” Roberson says. Jones is averaging 20 points per game and 10 rebounds, while Thomas is averaging 13 points and 10 rebounds per game. In fact, Roberson says both players have averaged a double double in every game for three years.
“I mean, that’s just unheard of,” says the coach, who can likely claim to have seen just about everything in his lifetime as a player and coach.
Roberson says Thomas will be taking her talents to Shelton State Community College, which he refers to as the “premier community college in Alabama.” Jones, on the other hand, will be heading off to college on a full scholarship, but not to play basketball.
“Hannah is going to attend Memphis University on a full volleyball scholarship,” he says.
Roberson says Jones easily could have played college basketball on scholarship, having demonstrated as much last year in the state’s all-star basketball game featuring the top juniors.
“Each season we have the North-South All-Star basketball game for juniors, and Hannah was named the game’s MVP,” he recalls.
Running the floor and feeding the ball to Jones and Thomas is shooting guard Avery Rogers. The team misses Ella Jane Connell, who Roberson said was dominant in leading his squad to the state title last season.
“She scored 39 points against Susan Moore last year, and was on fire,” the coach says, adding that Connell now plays with Faulkner University.
Roberson thinks the PCA boys team, despite having “struggled a little bit,” is on the right track.
“This year’s team has just one senior, so we will return just about everybody,” he says. “I think they’re ready to turn the corner.”
With the Prattville Christian Academy girls basketball team having won consecutive state titles, made final four trips in three of the last four years, and posted a 149-19 record over the last five years, it remains to be seen if coach Jason Roberson can keep the Panthers rolling.
We’ll be watching.
