Obituary: Ben Rogers was a Hall of Fame basketball coach at Middle Georgia College, led a coaching family
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The Rogers family in Cochran is a coaching family, and has been one for a long, long time.
Benjy and now son Tyler grew up at the elbow of the man who spent many years winning games, as well as teaching youngsters, for more than two decades at then-Middle Georgia Junior College.
They’re joined by the Cochran and Middle Georgia State communities in mourning the death Tuesday of Ben Rogers, the Hall of Fame coach and longtime teacher, at the age of 85.
Ben Rogers lost his favorite coaching cohort in February when his wife of 62 years, Glenda, passed away. Rogers had been an At Home Senior Living resident as well as patient at the Bryant Health and Rehabilitation Center in Cochran.
Services are Friday at 11 a.m. at Cochran First Baptist Church, with a private burial at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Cochran.
Rogers grew up in Bainbridge, graduating in 1956 after lettering in basketball, football and tennis, also participating in baseball and track. He was a scholarship football player at then-Troy State, competing in the Alabama Intercollegiate Conference in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
Named to Who’s Who in American College and Universities in 1960, he married Glenda, and his coaching career began at a military high school in Alabama. He was the Franklin County football coach, taking over that role at Crisp County, where he also started his basketball coaching career.
They moved a few counties to the northeast, and Rogers became the head men’s basketball coach at MGC, in 1968.
He led Middle Georgia College to region titles and trips to the national junior college tournament in 1978 and 1980, and was the state JC coach of the year seven times during his career at MGC from 1968-1993. Rogers served as the school’s athletics director from 1968-95, earned the Region 17 NJCAA AD of the Year in 1981.
In 1998, he was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Association Men’s Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, part of a four-person class that included Artis Gilmore, who went from then-junior college Gardner-Webb to help Jacksonville to the 1970 NCAA Tournament championship game.
He’s the only member from Georgia in that hall.
He was inducted into the Decatur County Sports Hall of Fame in Bainbridge in 2013.
Rogers had a broad education career, serving as an associate professor of math from 1968-2000. In 1999, the Board of Regents honored Rogers with the role of Associate Professor Emeritus of Math and Physical Education.
In 2010, the school unveiled a plaque paying tribute to Rogers that still hangs in the school’s gym in Cochran. Middle Georgia College became four-year Middle Georgia State in 2013, merging with Macon State College.
Rogers finished 471-275, according to NJCAA records, putting him in the top 100 of winningest junior college men’s head coaches
He is survived by daughter Jackie and son Benjy, who followed his father footsteps into the coaching and teaching world, spending three decades in a variety of athletics roles – including as AD - at Bleckley County.
He is retired from athletics, but remains in the system as an adaptive physical education teacher. Tyler Rogers, Ben’s grandson, is the head girls basketball coach at West Laurens, and was the Region 2-4A coach of the year in his first season.