By Andrew Edwards, EAN Staff Writer
USA Academy, a newly created private school designed to focus on student athletes, is reportedly scheduled to break ground in Coosada on January 20th.
Today the school’s founder Dusty DeVaughn held a press conference at the Prattville Marriot to officially introduce Rush Propst as the Academy’s head football coach.
“I appreciate the support of the community for coming out here today – especially my wife and kids. It means a lot to me to be a part of the USA Academy family. I can’t wait to get started on this new opportunity,” Propst said.
Probst also said he has yet to put a staff together for his team, but has been in contact with several individuals. His goal is to start lining up applicants within the next few days and make his assessments from there.
“When hiring I want to meet with people face to face. When I first starting coaching over 40 years ago, I tried to base everything off applications. Of course, they are important, but it’s not everything. This process can take some time and if we want to build a national powerhouse, we need to have the right coaches in place,” he said.
Probst said over 115 schools have contacted either him or DeVaughn to personally ask about playing for USA Academy for the 2020 year. They’ve also had nearly 400 applicants from around the country ask to be a part of the team, three of which are students at IMG academy.
The school officials hope to have 65-75 varsity players on their team for the 2020 year and plans to start conditioning and Spring practice by April 1.
“I’m willing to take the risk,” Probst said.
This is a developing story with more details to come soon.
Earlier this week we aired a video of Dusty DeVaughn speaking about his plans for the school, which if it becomes reality will be located on Lynn Drive in Coosada. You can find that on our Facebook page, as well as a longer story on our website posted earlier this week at www.elmoreautauganews.com.
We are working on a “meatier” story which will publish this afternoon with more details.
Since first announcing plans for the new school, we have been inundated with questions from readers, some who are skeptical that this will become a reality. We will address some of those questions in the article to come. However, DeVaughn said he has been working on this for several months, and “kept it in the shadows” on purpose as he lined up agreements with multiple organizations. He says he has the financial backing, which will be considerable.
We will have more on this shortly.
