Prattville Christian has officially moved on from 'twin towers' with McClendon leading
Jenna McClendon led Prattville Christian to an area title. She and the Panthers look to advance to the Class 4A Regional tournament with a win Friday over Catholic. (File Photo)
By TIM GAYLE
PRATTVILLE -- When Prattville Christian coach Jason Roberson was coaching his girls’ basketball team to three consecutive state championships, he fondly spoke of his “Twin Towers,” forwards Hannah Jones and CoCo Thomas.
When the pair graduated after the 2023 season and the Panthers embarked on a new journey in 2024, he referred to Jenna McClendon, who took over in the paint as a replacement for Jones and Thomas, as his “Single Skyscraper.”
“Hannah and CoCo definitely helped me so much,” McClendon said. “Breaking it down, like ‘Jenna, this is the way you need to block out.’ I think about that every day in practice. When we’re playing, I’m like, this is how I learned how to do it and I’m going to keep doing it that way because if it worked for them, it will work for me. From the mindset to how physical I have to be in blocking out, they have helped me so much.
“Both of them took me under their wing. They both knew, she is going to be the next one after us and they took the responsibility of coaching me up. They did such an amazing job. I miss both of them so much.”
But with Jones and Thomas -- and sometimes McClendon as well -- it was difficult for opponents to concentrate on one player. In McClendon’s case, she draws all of the attention.
“That makes it tougher for Jenna,” Roberson admitted. “Hannah and CoCo were great individually but together they made each other so much better because a team can’t focus on one of them. With Jenna, it’s harder. There are a lot of teams that will double-team her, triple-team her, so she’s learning how to make the reads out of that, learning how to make passes out of the double-team.”
Her development last season came to an abrupt halt when she suffered a season-ending knee injury in a January game at Hoover High. Prattville Christian was never the same team, trying to change its identity from a post-oriented team to a guard-oriented team and falling in the semifinals of the 4A state tournament to Good Hope.
“Good Hope played amazing,” Roberson said. “They beat us by 30 points. A lot of people would say Jenna’s probably worth 30 points, not necessarily scoring 30 points, but defensively, rebounding, length, making it harder to score around the rim. You can’t play the ‘what ifs.’ Good Hope deserved to win that game and deserved to win the state championship last year. Of course, we would have rather had Jenna.”
McClendon felt helpless as she watched her team lose, but was determined to make 2025 a year to remember.
“It was really hard,” she said. “Sitting on the sideline, saying ‘I could’ve done this, I could’ve done that,’ I didn’t dwell on that. It was more like whenever we do get there next season, this is what I’m going to do. I’m seeing this, I am going to work on it and I’m going to be a better athlete because of it.”
PCA (21-9) will be making its seventh consecutive postseason appearance when the Panthers play host to Catholic (18-7) in a 4A sub-regional game on Friday at 6 p.m. in the PCA gym. Since becoming an Alabama High School Athletic Association member 13 years ago, the Panthers have made 11 postseason appearances, going 8-2 in its previous 10 sub-regional appearances. The last four years have included trips to the state tournament.
If the Panthers return to Birmingham this year, McClendon will be a primary reason why. The Middle Tennessee State signee is averaging 20.2 points and 12.3 rebounds per game and went over the 1,000-point career mark last week.
And the 6-foot-4 senior can trace her breakout season back to a “horrible” injury she suffered on Jan. 15, 2024 in Hoover.
“I had been through an injury three or four years ago and mentally it wasn’t very challenging, but being this far into my season and that deep into those girls and that team, I never expected it,” she said. “Honestly, it was awful. Not being able to be on that court and having everything taken from me, the girls, the team, the sport for nine months, I missed it so much.”
Even before she was medically cleared to return, McClendon was in the gym, determined to put her junior season behind her and concentrate on the 2024-25 season.
“I don’t even think I was supposed to be shooting,” she said. “But when you have a love for something, it’s hard to let it go. I just knew if I can work on this, I’m going to work on this and I worked on my ball handling and my shooting because I knew I was going to have to be a main scorer this season.
“From last season where I was kind of all over the place to this season I feel like I’m more in control now and know what I’m doing.”
Roberson was amazed at the transformation. McClendon routinely drills 3-pointers in practice and he was determined to let her shoot perimeter shots in games, but she has been too dominant in the paint to move her away from the basket.
“Through the injury, I would just say there’s been an unbelievable improvement in her shooting,” Roberson said. “Her form, her rotation, her arc on the ball. I really feel like she’s an 80 to 85 percent free-throw shooter because of her improvement in her shot.
“At the end of last season, when she went out with the injury, we had to change our whole identity and we did everything through our guards. Now, with her back, we are slowly starting to become that team that we have been in the past, where we play inside and out and start inside. We have amazing guards that are going to play college basketball, but there’s something to be said for a 6-foot-3, 6-4 post player in high school basketball. There’s just not a lot of them.”