Tharptown taps Cooper to lead Lady Wildcats basketball program

When the Lady Wildcats hit the hardwood this winter they will be led by an experienced coach and a familiar face on the sideline. Jason Cooper was announced as the new head coach of the Tharptown High School varsity girls’ basketball team last week. The hiring was approved at the Franklin County Board of Education meeting on June 11.

“Coach Cooper brings a lot of years of coaching experience, especially in basketball,” Tharptown High School principal Tyler Berryman said. “He was already on staff, and he was willing to step up to the plate and take the position. We’re glad to have him.”

Cooper is a math teacher at Tharptown and for the past couple years has been serving in assistant coaching roles in multiple sports at the school already. A 1998 graduate of Phil Campbell High School, Cooper has been around the block with coaching stints in a number of sports at schools around the state.

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years, so I have been around a little bit,” Cooper said.

Just some of Cooper’s experience includes the softball and girls’ basketball head coaching jobs at Vina from 2004 to 2006; he spent a decade at Haleyville coaching multiple sports and was a part of the 2013 state championship softball team there; and he also coached at Bear Creek and East Franklin before going to Tharptown. He has coached football, baseball, softball, soccer, and basketball in his career. Until now, Cooper’s roles at Tharptown have been as an assistant with the football, baseball, and boys’ basketball teams, but he said he’s looking forward to taking over a program of his own once again.

“It was something that I was looking to get back into—being the head coach and getting to call the shots,” Cooper said. “I’m excited about it.”

Already being a member of the school staff gives Cooper a built in advantage with his new team.

“I know all of the girls and have had most of them in class, so I feel like we’ve already built that relationship,” he said.

Cooper’s team is a young one, but he believes they are talented and may be able to make waves in his first year at the helm.

“My expectations have always been high as a coach. I believe we can possibly make a run at the playoffs given our new area,” he said.

“We’re definitely going to be young, and we’ll probably have some younger girls step up and play a role at the varsity level,” he added. “The goal is to just work to get better and hopefully make a run to the playoffs.”

Tharptown, which is in Class 2A Area 14 along with Belgreen and Covenant Christian, has already held tryouts and the team is practicing now. Cooper said the current objective is to improve in the basics.

“We’re just working on the fundamentals. We’ve got to get better fundamentally—passing the ball, shooting the ball, dribbling the ball,” he said. “Our defense has got to get better. With our youth my goal is to not get into any high-scoring games and we want to keep the score down. We’re working on our defense to do that and win some games.”