SOFTBALL LEGEND: Stough to retire after 2025 season

With the completion of the 2025 season, Randy Stough will step down as the head softball coach at Prattville Christian Academy, completing a 37-year career. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Randy Stough, who launched Wetumpka’s fast pitch softball program in the late 1990s and later made Prattville Christian Academy one of the most recognizable names in high school softball in this state, announced to his players on Wednesday that the 2025 season would be his last.

Prattville Christian Academy officials were scheduled to release a statement on Thursday morning announcing Stough’s retirement.

“I’ve enjoyed doing it over the years, with the connections and relationships I’ve built,” Stough said earlier this week. “I’m going to miss that a lot. When I got out of coaching at Wetumpka in 2012, I was kind of burned out because I had to do more fund raising than coaching. I got the fire to get back into it and this was the perfect opportunity for me. I feel good about what we’ve done at PCA over the years.”

Stough’s decision will cap a 37-year coaching career that started at Harris County (Ga.) High in 1987-88, moved on to Red Level for nine years as a baseball coach, assistant football coach and junior high basketball coach, then to Wetumpka for 16 years before spending the last 11 years at Prattville Christian.

At Wetumpka High, he coached the Indians to their first-ever fast pitch state tournament appearance in 2002. Wetumpka was the Class 5A state runner-up in 2004 under Stough and made its first appearance as a 6A program in 2008.

“When I went there, I was supposed to be the girls’ basketball coach,” Stough said. “And they said, ‘Look, we need you to coach softball,’ and I said, ‘I’ll do it for one year.’ Here I am, all these years later, still doing it.”

He did coach girls’ basketball for two seasons, but made a bigger name after retiring and later taking the reins as the softball coach at Prattville Christian Academy during the school’s transition from an Alabama Independent School Association member to the Alabama High School Athletic Association.

The Panthers have made eight trips to the state tournament over the last 10 years, missing only the 2017 season (there was no postseason softball in 2020). PCA won the Class 3A state championship in 2018, finished third in 2019 and second in 2021, earning a bump to Class 4A by Competitive Balance Factor in 2023.

“There are several coaches, when I first started, that had been around for a long time so you just try to learn stuff from them,” St. James coach Mark Hall said. “Chris Goodman was one of those. Randy Stough is one of those. If you don’t pick up a nugget here or there from them in the game of softball, you’re crazy. All his teams are well coached. He’ll be missed, no doubt.”

Stough was still teaching at Wetumpka in 2013-14 when PCA officials contacted him.

 “I was doing hitting lessons with a softball player,” Stough recalled. “Her mom taught at (PCA) and she told the principal about me and they wanted to meet me. I was actually out of coaching for a year. I was still teaching at Wetumpka and was working part-time with the City of Wetumpka complex putting on tournaments.”

Earlier this season, he won his 800th victory as a softball coach.  

 “You always wonder when you’re going to be in it too long or when that time (to retire) is,” Stough said. “I think this is the opportune time. I’ve got four grandkids and I want to go watch them play. It’s just time. I’m physically tired.”

Stough, 61, will remain at the school as a teacher in 2025-26 before retiring from the academic side as well. He recommended pitching coach Chris Puckett to assume Stough’s duties as the Panthers’ head softball coach.

“He’s been with me now for two years and he does a great job teaching the game and has a great rapport with the kids,” Stough said. “He’ll do a good job. We think a lot alike. That’s scary, but we think a lot alike. Our philosophy on things and mechanics on hitting and fielding are on the same page.”