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An experienced high school boys basketball coach will be returning to the sideline this year, but he’ll be coaching girls this time.
Darrell Plogger was named the head coach of the RC girls basketball team by the county School Board during last Tuesday’s meeting.
Plogger, 58, was the head coach for the RC boys for 10 years from 2010-20 before he stepped down, although he stepped back into coaching as an assistant RC boys basketball coach last winter. To lead the RC girls’ program, Plogger replaces Andrew Bellairs, who coached the team for the last two years.
Under Bellairs, who left to take a job teaching eighth grade math in Greenville, S.C., the Wildcats went 5-39, going 3-19 during the 2021-22 season before going 2-20 last winter, ending the season on a nine-game losing streak. They went winless in the Valley District both seasons.
Plogger said the team’s overall record in recent years doesn’t matter to him. “Our goal is to get better every day,” he said.
He got to see the Wildcats play some last year and knows the team was athletic but young and inexperienced, with mostly first-year varsity players. However, Plogger said he won’t put a limit on how good the team can be. “I’ll never forget, when I took the boys’ job the first year, a good friend of mine told me we weren’t going to win five games,” said Plogger. “I said, I’ve got a group that’s ready to play, and we won 20 games. I won’t limit what we can do.”
In addition to coaching, Plogger will continue his job as the senior program coordinator for the Rockbridge Area Recreation Organization. Plogger has worked for RARO for 29 years.
There were several reasons the coaching position appealed to Plogger. Through RARO this summer, Plogger helped run fundamental clinics, starting out with middle school boys and then adding high school girls. “They work really hard, and they listen really well,” said Plogger of the RC girls he worked with.
“It’ll be different for me because I’ve never
, page A9 coached girls, but in the end, I think basketball’s basketball,” he added.
Plogger also refereed some of the girls in their summer league games in Buena Vista. “I was impressed with just how hard they played,” he said.
Plogger has been around the sport of basketball since he was a kid. He grew up in Lexington and played for the late Lexington High School coach Chick Crawford before graduating from LHS in 1983. “I learned so much from him,” Plogger said of Crawford.
At LHS, Plogger played one year of junior varsity basketball at LHS before playing three years of varsity basketball. He went on to play for two years for Bridgewater College, from which he graduated in 1987 with a bachelor of science degree in sociology.
During Plogger’s 10 years as the RC boys basketball team’s head coach, the Wildcats consistently had winning seasons. Plogger’s most successful season was in 20112012, when the Wildcats won the district and regional championship before falling to state champion Brunswick 64-59 in overtime in the Group AA, Division 3 state semifinals. The Wildcats trailed by 17 points in that game, but RC guard Andrew Rowsey, then a junior, scored 34 points, sinking seven 3-pointers to help his team make a valiant comeback. RC finished the season with a record of 25-3.
Another highlight of Plogger’s career was coaching the Wildcats to the Valley District championship in 2018, with a 69-56 upset victory at Spotswood that snapped the Trailblazers’ 86-game winning streak of district opponents.
Plogger got to coach his son Aaron, a 2021 graduate, at RC. After Plogger stepped down, Aaron transferred to Parry McCluer High School and helped the Fighting Blues win the Class 1 state basketball title in 2021, the first state title in program history for PM. Aaron now works with solar panels in Florida. Plogger’s older son, Tyler, a 2017 RC graduate who wrestled for the Wildcats, lives in Lexington and works at Food Lion.
The RC girls basketball team has been through a lot of different coaches and has only had one winning season, which was in 2014-15 when Bart Bellairs, father of Andrew, led them to a 15-10 record.
Although the history of the team hasn’t been a successful one, Plogger is confident in the team’s potential, especially as a defensively strong team. “The way they play and the effort that they play with, it’s a six-week process of getting them to where I want them to be, but I think we can be really, really good on the defensive side.”
The style of defense the Wildcats play will vary, Plogger said, “I’m a man-to-man guy, but I also like to press,” he said. “We can do man presses. We can do zone presses. I think we’re going to be deep enough and athletic enough that we can play that style.”
The Wildcats only graduated two players from last year’s team, and Plogger hopes the rest of the players will return and continue to improve offensively and defensively. The most promising returning players are sophomore forward Lola Mulitalo and senior post player Maddie Dahl, who were named to the all-district second team last winter, and sophomore guard Abby Bouchard. Plogger intended to start contacting his potential assistant coaches last weekend.
After the first two weeks of school, Plogger plans to hold open gyms on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the girls interested in playing basketball, working with RC boys basketball head coach Rob Winfield in coordinating the open gyms.
RC athletic director Adam Haynes had words of praise for Plogger last week. Haynes joined Plogger as an assistant coach for the RC boys basketball team last winter, when the Wildcats bounced back from an 0-7 start to finish 1111.
“Coach Plogger is a highenergy guy with a lot of passion for the game of basketball,” said Haynes. “He has shown to have really good leadership and will run the basketball program with great character and integrity. We feel that Coach Plogger is the right person to lead our girls basketball program here. … We look forward to witnessing his version of Wildcat basketball.”
