Ponder new baseball coach at Pike Road

Former “Mr. Baseball” Allen Ponder has been named the new head coach at Pike Road. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Allen Ponder figures his Pike Liberal Arts baseball team would have had a good shot at winning a state championship in 2020 had the season not been interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

And 2021. And maybe 2022.

That’s why leaving the Troy private school was one of the hardest decisions he’s ever had to make.

“It was a very tough decision,” Ponder said. “It had to be something really, really good for me to leave because I’m in a very, very good situation with a lot of talent. We’ve kind of built that program in the six years where we want it to be. The kids understand what is expected and it’s a good group of kids.”

The Pike Road Board of Education approved the hiring of Ponder at its monthly meeting on Thursday night, replacing the school’s first-ever baseball coach, Skipper Jones, who retired at the end of the 2020 season.

“We were searching for the right fit to lead our baseball program,” Pike Road athletic director Patrick Browning said, “someone who is of high character, will care about our players, is a proven winner both on and off the field and who will take our baseball program to the next level. We found that in Allen Ponder and we are extremely excited to welcome him into the Pike Road family.” 

For the 36-year-old Ponder, career decisions are now made with his family in mind and working in a school system such as Pike Road, where a new baseball stadium is currently being constructed, was the perfect fit for him. 

“It’s one of those things that I couldn’t, in my right mind, pass up,” he said. “It’s just a great school system, a great program. I look at it as having unlimited possibilities. They’re doing it the right way, pouring a ton of money into their facilities. You’ve got to spend money for success and they’re doing it. Now it’s just a matter of coming in there and creating a winning culture.

“For me, it’s not just about baseball. Seven, eight years ago, I was thinking for myself. Now, I’m thinking for my family and when I look at these possibilities, I don’t look at it as an individual, but as a family of three. I look at the community, I look at the school system. Their elementary school is great, their middle school is great, their high school (is great), everything’s growing, their facilities are first class. I would have no problem sending my son to that school system.”

In Ponder’s six years at Pike Liberal Arts, the Troy school was a fixture in the annual Alabama Independent School Association state baseball tournament, winning Class AAA state titles in 2018 and 2019. The Patriots were 15-1 in 2020 when play was halted in mid-March by the coronavirus pandemic.

“The way we were playing, we hadn’t even started playing well yet,” Ponder said. “We’ve always been a second-half team so I feel like in the second half (of the season) we would have been very difficult to beat. I think we would have won a third one.”

One of his best coaching jobs came a month earlier when he took the Pike Liberal boys’ basketball team to the state finals. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Patriots, but Pike Liberal won a playoff game to advance to the state tournament, where the Patriots stunned Success Unlimited and Bessemer Academy in back-to-back contests to reach the AAA finals, where they lost to Tuscaloosa Academy.

A native of Auburn, Ponder is a 2002 graduate of Lee-Scott Academy, where he compiled a .517 batting average and set a school record with 49 home runs in five years on the varsity. His senior year, he was 12-0 on the mound with a 0.09 earned run average (allowing one earned run in 79.2 innings) with 139 strikeouts and seven walks.

His jersey (No. 44) was retired by Lee-Scott Academy.

Ponder was named “Mr. Baseball” by the Alabama Sports Writers Association and remained the only AISA player in state history to earn the top ASWA award in any sport until Gunnar Henderson of Morgan Academy won the “Mr. Baseball” award in 2019.

Ironically, Henderson’s heavily favored Senators lost in the finals to the Ponder-coached Patriots.

Ponder was drafted twice, selected by the Orioles in 2002 as a high school senior and by the Pirates in 2008 upon his graduation from Auburn University Montgomery.

He was signed by Jim Wells out of high school and went to Alabama, where he promptly earned national acclaim by beating second-ranked and eventual national champion Rice in the championship game of the Minute Maid Park College Classic in Houston.

His freshman season was cut short by injuries that continued to plague the hard-luck pitcher throughout his Crimson Tide career. He appeared in only six games as a sophomore in 2004 and underwent offseason shoulder surgery, missing the entire 2005 season in the process.

He transferred to AUM and played for Q.V. Lowe, where he experienced a resurgence in his career, going 9-1 on the mound and hitting 31 home runs with 133 RBIs in two years for the Senators. He was inducted into the AUM Hall of Fame in 2017.

He played for a year in the Pirates’ organization, then returned to Montgomery and went to work at Strike Zone for a year. He got into coaching in 2010 at Lee-Scott Academy for three years, then went to Lakeside School for two years and has been at Pike Liberal Arts for the last six.