Calhoun County, AL – Propst scheduled to lead a game in Calhoun County for the first time in the last 31 years. Smith will make a return visit in the Field of Champions, with Westbrook Christian
Joe Medley
Rush Propst recalls the day before his the Ohatchee High School, his alma mater’s Roy C. Owens Field was a reality. The Indians played in Ohatchee’s old town park along AL-144.
High school football players from Calhoun County were kings, the coach said, and making the All-Calhoun County was “the best part of your career.”
How come almost 48 years have passed since the graduate of 1976 played with the Indians?
What could be the reason that 31 years have passed since a native headliner like Propst was a coach within Calhoun County?
In a night filled with celebrations of homecomings for coaches from Calhoun County, Propst will be looking up at his home stadium lighting Friday. The team he is forming, Pell City, plays an upcoming Class 6A, region 6 game at the Oxford’s Lamar Field.
The game will be Propst’s debut as Head Coach as a head coach in Calhoun County since 1992, in which Ashville defeated Ohatchee in 1992 and Pleasant Valley.
Around 28 miles north approximately 28 miles north via. AL-21. Steve Smith will coach Westbrook Christian at Piedmont in which he won five state championships during a span of 17 years that ended with the 2022 season.
They Propst together with Smith have together 10 Alabama state titles. Propst took all five of them state titles at Hoover prior to adding 2 Georgia state titles along alongside Colquitt County.
Smith made it clear in December last year that he would accept the Westbrook job, and then finish his school’s year with a different position as Piedmont’s sports director.
The Smiths remain in Piedmont and he commutes every day for 35 minutes to work. The wife Rachel is still the Piedmont’s softball coach, while their eldest child, Savannah, is a Piedmont senior and a Jacksonville State University softball commit.
Savannah will be crowned Piedmont’s queen of homecoming in the coming week. Her dad moved Westbrook’s contest against Geraldine to Thursday, so Savannah could go with him.
Smith has been coaching for the team in Calhoun County since leaving Piedmont. Westbrook hosted a jamboree in Ohatchee in August. He also naturally, he scouted his next opponent Piedmont’s 14-9 loss at Anniston in the afternoon of Thursday.
His team is comprised of James Blanchard, Smith’s defensive coordinator during all 17 seasons, as well as the former Donoho director of football Mark Sanders.
As Smith is bringing the team he has inherited to face his old team in 3A region 6 play is underway, Westbrook stands at 3overall, and 1-2 in the region. Piedmont after opening with a brutal schedule, and being plagued by major injuries, is currently 1-4 and 1-1.
The significance of the game for both teams is paramount over any other plot, Smith said.
“I do not wish to turn it into something all about me, absolutely,” he said. “It’s two teams trying to win a football match in order to win football games. …
“I’ve had a lot of respect, evidently, in regard to Piedmont and the time I was there. I’m having the time my life at Westbrook currently and working to help these guys get going. It’s really just about two teams that are on the field. We both need to win in order in order keep our hopes of making the playoffs alive.”
Propst has been in Piedmont for the last four years following his son Thomas his playing career in the wide receiver position for Smith. Thomas Propst graduated in May and his father has moved on to two different jobs in the following months, first as an assistant director of athletics and coach for Coosa Christian then to Pell City.
He was hired to take over a team that hasn’t won a season since the 2017 season and hasn’t had a win in an playoff game since making it to two rounds in. The Panthers have last beaten Oxford in their final regular-season contest in the year 2012 winning 34-28.
The playoff win against Austin in 2012 was Pell City’s only playoff victory since the Panthers reached the quarterfinals in 2003.
Pell City went 2-8, 2-8 and 1-9 in the course of three seasons. The team is 1-4, 1-1 in the region going into Friday’s game with Oxford (5-1, 5-1, 3-0).
Pell City will mark Propst’s debut head coaching role at the helm in Alabama since 2007 at Hoover. Propst is the Panthers sixth head coach after 2010 and is expecting an extended journey ahead in the future for the Panthers.
“Facilities are in a awful condition,” said Propst, who was hired following Steve Mask’s stay of one year. “The Fieldhouse was the exact as the fieldhouse they constructed in 1986. … It was their decision to put in turf. When we were talking I told them”Look I’m not coming unless you put in turf since the pitch is in bad condition. Then they put in turf however they haven’t put money into the program when coaches have gone and come.
“People have questioned me about what made me choose the job? I chose it for a couple of reasons. First foremost, St. Clair County is my second home. My first job was at Ashville and I enjoy St. Clair County, but I’m thinking it will be my most challenging task.”
Propst claimed that the Pell City reconstruction will require “several months,” working from the high school levels to the upper levels while also improving the facilities.
He started on June 5 and he hired the remainder of his staff, including the former Alexandria Assistant Jake Welch, later that month. The new staff did not have an vacation time with their new team.
Their summer was remembered for an intense moment at the end of a seven-on-7 contest against Oxford. A headline highlighted the colorful word Propst and was shouted all over the pitch.
Oxford Coach Sam Adams has called the incident exaggerated, claiming both he and Propst immediately embraced and discussed parking and tickets to their game in the regular season.
“That was the excitement that was going on,” Propst said. “He was fighting to protect his teammates. I was fighting for my team But Sam’s a nice person.”
Propst is contemplating the first time he has played for his Pell City side “behind with the ball” in the matchup against Oxford.
“They’re the level we’ll need to be in two or three years in the future,” he said. “We’re not anywhere near their level at the moment. I’m sorry. We’re not.”
The game will take place 21 miles southeast of Ohatchee in the area in which Propst’s roots are deep. His father, Clifford Rush Propst, owned the Propst Lumber Co. in the 1920s to 1940s.
Propst has 60 acres in its landholdings within the Ohatchee region, which includes an area that is across to the road from Roy C. Owens Stadium that is used to park cars during Indians home games.
“They have a parking lot on my premises all week long and I’m more than happy to allow it,” he said. “Everything you can see from the bridge that crosses the creek back, after railway tracks, and follow the railroad tracks, I imagine that along the entire length of the field, and after that, it’s all mine property.”
The 65-year-old Propst claimed that only distant relatives remain within Calhoun County, but memories “will never fade from my memory forever.”
“Ohatchee was a wonderful location to be a child,” he said. “I always tell people often that I was raised by some of the top coaches — Ragan Clark Ken Logan, Tim MacTaggart and Jerry Ellard. The coach Clark became a second father to me.
“We were just a fantastic segment of men that were just having lots of enjoyment. We experienced many successes and it was hard to beat growing up along that creekbank.”
