Fifth in a five-part series

By Shannon Fagan, WEIS Sports Director

When Spring Garden’s Ricky Austin was officially named the new women’s basketball coach at Jacksonville State University on March 31, his cell phone lit up with congratulatory calls and text messages from all over.

On the other end of many of those messages were 30-plus years of people whom Austin had some sort of impact during his high school basketball coaching career.

“I had over 500 text messages the day it was announced,” Austin said. “I still haven’t been able to respond (to them all).”

There’s no doubt Austin’s career has touched so many lives.

He compiled a career girls and boys basketball coaching record of 1,017-370, which included 17 Final Four appearances with nine state championships. Three of those championships were consecutive (2023-25) and two were back-to-back (2004-05).

He also guided Spring Garden’s volleyball program to three state titles, including back-to-back in 2023 and 2024.

Austin’s girls basketball teams won 30 or more games 14 times and he coached just three losing seasons.

He’s had the Panther basketball court named in his honor and was part of the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026. The induction ceremony occurred just a week prior to him being named the new head coach at Jacksonville State.

But before he officially closes the high school chapter of his career, Austin has one more honor to be bestowed.

Austin is part of the Cherokee County Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2026, along with Cherokee County High School’s Lauren Millsaps Coursey, Cedar Bluff’s Tyrone Moore, Cherokee County High School’s Sam Fife, and Cherokee County High School’s Harry Richardson.

The 2026 class will formally be inducted at a reception in their honor on Saturday at Richard Lindsey Arena at 6 p.m.

The Hall of Fame will also recognize five high school teams of distinction. Football teams being honored are the 1959 Cedar Bluff football state champions (10-0), the 1967 Cherokee County Warriors (9-1-1, first AHSAA all-classification playoffs), and the 1975 Gaylesville Trojans (11-1).

Also being honored are the boys basketball squads from Sand Rock (1965-66 first Final Four team) and Spring Garden (1978-79 state runner-up).

“Cherokee County is a special place,” Austin said. “There are a lot of special people, and for me to be recognized like that, words can’t describe what an honor it is to me.

“There are so many people in the hall of fame, not just the ones I’m directly related to, like my wife (Dana Austin) and her twin sister (Jana McGinnis). There are so many other people who I have coached with and against, known my whole life practically. We’ve pulled for each other. We’ve wanted to beat each other. We’ve had some great relationships developed because of that. With the quality of people who are in this hall of fame, it’s just an honor to be standing right beside them and to be invited to join them.”

A 1984 Spring Garden graduate, where he was point guard for Hall of Fame coach Dale Welsh on the Panthers’ Class 1A state runner-up, Austin continued his education at Southern Union Junior College. His intention was to become a teacher and coach, but that path took a detour following the death of one of his best friends, Scott Abel, in an automobile accident.

“He was younger than me, but he and I were strongly connected through basketball,” Austin said. “We had so many battles, not just against each other, but going to the park and playing summertime pickup games, daring anybody to walk in our gym and play us two-on-two. That evolved into other people in the community who joined in on those pickup games, like Randall Roland, Tommy Lewis, Tim Cronan, Steve Roland, and Charlie Gamble.

“On those early Saturday mornings, those two-on-two games and one-on-one games, I was coaching and didn’t realize it. I was trying to figure out how to beat the guys who would challenge us. I think that’s where the coaching come in. I realized these people were listening to me when we played those pickup games. We were having success at it and having the time of our life while we were doing it. That’s probably where the coaching bug came from.”

But his friend’s death had a profound effect on Austin.

“When he passed away, I kind of lost something. I had to step back from basketball. I wanted away from it,” Austin said. “It took a couple of years. I went into radiology. I went into exercise science. I went as an X-ray technician. I was bouncing around all over the place.”

Austin said Dana helped bring him back to basketball.

“She was like ‘You’re not going to be happy unless you’re coaching. I know it and you know it. Get your butt down there to Jax State and get to work in education,’” Austin said. “She’s the one who pushed me back into it. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Dana had quite the successful basketball career herself. She teamed with her twin sister Jana to help bring Spring Garden its first basketball title in 1987. The duo went on to stardom at JSU, with both having their jerseys retired.

Dana went on to coach the Gamecock women’s basketball team for 10 years, and Jana led the softball team for 31 years.

Austin said the 1987 Spring Garden state championship team that featured Dana and Jana also had a tremendous influence on his career.

“It influenced me to want to coach girls basketball,” Austin said. “Dana and Jana’s junior summer, for some reason, they trusted me to develop summer workouts for them. We went to the gym and we worked.

“Coach David Bedwell would bring me and Kevin Porter back in to scrimmage against them and simulate the teams they were playing in the playoffs. That just enriched my desire to want to coach. To be a distant part of their state championship and knowing that I had done a little bit of the work behind the scenes, it was a strong connection of something that I got to taste that I loved. They had such a positive effect on our school, our community, everybody around our school. I’m sitting there going ‘This is something special. Why can’t we keep this going?’”

Austin got his chance to ‘keep things going’ at Spring Garden as the girls basketball and volleyball coach in 1996. It took him just six years to build the Lady Panthers into a Final Four team. Spring Garden won its first state title under Austin in 2004 to cap a 34-1 season.

“It was special obviously because it was the first one, but if you go back and follow how that team was developed when they were junior high players –  the Mikie Garners, the Dusty Gills, the Britney Parrises, the Latrisha Abernathys, the Paige Andersons – they were all seventh graders except Paige. I thought this group is pretty special,” Austin said. “At the time, Dana was coaching at Jax State. I would come home from practice or after a game and I would tell her, ‘This team is going to win us a state championship.’ Dana would come and watch us play, and she’d say ‘I don’t know Rat, I think you might be setting your standards a little too high.’ I was like ‘You just wait.’”

Austin had laid his foundation, and it was on solid ground.

The Lady Panthers went on to win their second straight title under Austin the following season, then went a perfect 36-0 during the 2007-08 season to clinch Spring Garden’s fourth state title.

Austin also guided the Lady Panthers to state championships in 2016, 2018, 2020, and a three-peat in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

During the three-peat and 2020 state title, he coached his daughter and current University of Alabama point guard Ace Austin – the only two-time Alabama Sports Writers Association Miss Basketball award winner. Ace Austin earned the Miss Basketball honor in both 2024 and 2025.

In between all of the basketball state titles, Austin also led the Lady Panther volleyball program to state championships in 2007, 2023 and 2024.

And now, at the beginning of a new chapter in his life, Austin is hoping his high school coaching blueprint for success carries over to the collegiate level at JSU.

“My time at Spring Garden, I was always big on discipline, big on being consistent, and big on relationships,” he said. “I learned every bit of that at Spring Garden, and that’s what we’re trying to do here. Those same three things have got to be here with us. I hope we can have the same effect, and the results are the same here.

“I’m not promising championships, but we’re going to work hard. We’re going to try and win the day. Every day we want to feel like we’ve accomplished and won something and see where that takes us. We’re going to have to go about it maybe a different way, but the basics, the fundamentals, the platform, the beliefs, I’m bringing all of that with me.”