Former Faulkner coach Sanderson hired to lead ACA basketball
Jim Sanderson is the new coach at Alabama Christian Academy. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
You don’t have to look far to find Jim Sanderson these days.
The new Alabama Christian Academy boys’ basketball camp can usually be found in the gym, teaching elementary school age or middle school players the fundamentals of the game.
Sanderson has no illusions about the task in front of him. His coaching career has taken him to a lot of high school and college programs throughout the state, but this stop will certainly rank among the most challenging.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Sanderson said. “I just have to be able to develop the culture, get the guys to understand what it’s going to take during the summer. Me taking the job right when school was out was tough, but I’m starting to get to know a lot of the guys.”
He was hired in late May, an easy choice for ACA athletic director Aaron Greenwood, who played for Sanderson at Faulkner University.
“During his time at Faulkner, they was an ACA family,” Greenwood said. “His kids are ACA alums, his wife taught at ACA for a long time before they moved off. So when we headed into this process, knowing that we had a lot of work to do to build the program to where we want it to be, there was nobody in my mind that I thought would do it better than Coach Sanderson.
“I was blessed to see that level of heart firsthand and know that he had it. When he said he was interested in being a part of this, it was a pretty easy decision for us.”
Sanderson is familiar with the program, having coached for 24 years at Faulkner. As a member of the First Family of Basketball in the state, he is the eldest son of former Alabama coach Wimp Sanderson. Jim compiled a 517-352 record in 27 years at the NAIA level, spending 24 years at Faulkner and three more at Freed-Hardeman. He was hired to coach at Hewitt-Trussville in 2016, but ended up spending a year as an assistant coach at Ramsay. He coached at Freed-Hardeman in 2017-19 and at Next Level Academy for the past two seasons.
His younger brother Scott, an assistant at several programs and a head coach at Mobile and Lipscomb, took over at Faulkner in 2014 when Jim stepped down. His youngest brother Barry, an assistant coach for several years at the collegiate level, has spent the last five years as the head coach at Tuscaloosa Academy.
Coaching the past two years at Next Level Academy has provided a different perspective for Jim Sanderson.
“These are guys that I took that had graduated from high school but maybe didn’t get any college offers and wanted to play college basketball or maybe got a college offer and it wasn’t what they wanted,” he said. “So they went to college part-time, so their eligibility clock wouldn’t start, and they would train with me and we would play other post-grad schools in the Southeast.”
When he found out ACA officials were looking for a boys’ basketball coach, the opportunity piqued his interest.
“I found out from someone at church about it,” Sanderson said. “Of course, (ACA head of school) Greg Glenn goes to the same church so that’s how we got the ball rolling. I was intrigued by it. I knew the program had been down.”
The Eagles haven’t had much success from the boys’ basketball program. In the last 10 years, ACA has reached the area tournament finals just twice. Since the Alabama High School Athletic Association switched to the regional format in 1994, the Eagles have just two area tournament championships, nine postseason trips and one trip (1998) to the regionals.
“At the size school we’re at, these kids are multi-sport athletes,” Sanderson said. “They’re going to be going from one sport to the next. If we develop the mentality they’ve got to have, I think it will filter through all the sports.”
But it starts with the younger players, building interest among athletes who won’t play for Sanderson for several years. That’s why he is spending so much time with summer camps and watching younger players in hopes of building interest in playing at ACA.
Sanderson was asked about getting more participation and toughening up the schedule. Building up the program, he admits, won’t happen overnight.
“I told them when I interviewed for the job, down the road I want to line up and play against Robert E. Lee and Carver and Jeff Davis,” he said. “That’s probably something ACA has never done before. When I took over the program at Faulkner and we were fortunate enough to win a national championship, in time we started playing nationally ranked teams, we started playing Division I-A schools. I just have to make sure we do it at a good pace and don’t get ahead of myself.
“I know it can be done, it’s just going to take time. Even though I’ll be 63 in August, I have to be here for an extended period of time to get this thing moving in the right direction.”