2025 Fall Preps Preview: Under coach Ryan Cole, Rogers football goes from winless to league power in few short years

The turnaround in the Rogers football program – on and off the field – over the past few years has been nothing short of miraculous. Just don’t expect coach Ryan Cole to play into the hype.

He’s more concerned about continuing to build a lasting culture, even after two consecutive playoff appearances, than Xs and Os.

“I don’t like the idea of coming to a place where you’re content or settling. Like, ‘Hey guys, well, at least we’re better than we were five years ago,’ ” he said. “We’re constantly just working how can we improve. And sometimes it’s important for us as coaches to remind ourselves that we have come a long way and that things have gotten a lot better.”

It wasn’t always the case.

The Pirates went nearly three years without winning a football game. In 2019, its last season in the 3A classification, Rogers scored just three touchdowns in nine games and was shut out five times. There were discipline issues on and off the field. There was difficulty attracting talent to play; even more retaining it. Coaches came and went.

“When you get young men together that are competitors and different personalities, there’s always going to be head-butting and clashing. That’s just the nature of it,” Cole said. “But we talk about brotherhood. They’re creating a lot less toxicity, a lot more camaraderie, a lot more togetherness.

“At the end of the day, we all wear the same colors. We’ve got to have a mutual respect for each other.”

Slowly, things started to change.

In the COVID year of 2020, Rogers started playing a 2A schedule. It didn’t pay dividends right away, but in September 2022, the Pirates broke a 23-game losing streak, beating Medical Lake 49-6 on the road. They ended up with four wins that season, including a pair of league wins.

After several seasons as an assistant, Cole was hired as head coach in 2023, which brought a seven-win season and Rogers’ first playoff berth since 2015. Then last year, the Pirates won six games and qualified for the 2A postseason once again.

The past – the most recent and the not too distant – serves as a reminder of how quickly things can change when a group of like-minded individuals are willing to put in the work.

“A lot of these kids, these type of kids, have been around. They’ve been available,” Cole said. “They just didn’t turn out. And not even just turn out, but they weren’t willing to put in the time in the offseason.”

Senior Alex Peabody was a freshman on the 2022 team, and he remembers how difficult things were.

“Cole took over my sophomore year, and that’s when stuff started to change,” he said. “My freshman year there were a bunch of fights (at practice), a bunch of everything. Cole came in, put some more order on the practice, and we’ve had the players with the talent to get it done and stick around.”

Instead of being an afterthought – or worse – Rogers is now considered one of the favorites to win the league. Instead of scorn or pity, Rogers is spoken of with respect.

“It’s a crazy feeling,” Peabody said. “I remember freshman year, if you tell people you go to Rogers it was, like, embarrassing. And now it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s you guys.’ They know about us now. It’s a good feeling, for sure.”

“We hear it from community members and people here in the building,” Cole said. “They talk to us all the time about how Rogers has become known as a team that other teams are worried about playing, rather than circling us as a ‘W’ before the season even starts.

“Of course we do want to be competitors and we want people to know that we’re serious about what we do. But for me and my role and what I need to get done, I can’t spend too much time thinking on those things. I need to think about the here and now.”

Here and now, on the field, means speed. A lot of it. Rogers wants to play fast on offense and defense. That should come as no surprise, as football players make up a good chunk of the Pirates’ state-caliber sprint teams.

Receivers Jerry Allen, Mikey Sanders and Jelani Kabba were members of the Pirates’ third-place 4x100 relay team at state last season, while Sanders placed third in the 100 and fifth in the 200.

Along with Peabody, that forms a dangerous corps of pass-catchers for the Pirates, regardless of who is throwing it to them. Peabody, who also plays basketball, scored 11 touchdowns last season, and that could go up this season.

“I’m not going to put a number on it,” Cole said. “But he’s a really good ball player.”

Allen is a force on both sides of the ball who has already committed to the University of Idaho, and according to his coach Sanders has put on a “good amount” of muscle over the summer to prepare for the rigors of sliding from slot to more of a featured role in the backfield.

“My goodness, the kid, his acceleration is ridiculous,” Cole said of Sanders. “He’s one of the fastest kids in the state.”

It should come as no surprise that Rogers’ receivers coach, Khalil Winfrey, was a football player and sprinter at Rogers before running at the University of Washington and is the girls’ head track and field coach. Offensive coordinator Brent Palmer is the head boys’ track coach.

“When you talk about speed, a lot of it is God-given, but it is also something you can develop and work on,” Cole said. “We build the relationships with the boys in football, and then they do their thing in the winter – whether it’s lifting, basketball, wrestling – and then we work really hard to get them all out for track. And so it’s a year-long relationship with these guys.”

“Being big and strong helps,” Peabody said. “But if you’re just faster than the guy, there’s really nothing they can do to guard you.”

The biggest question for Cole heading into the season is at quarterback, where junior Coby Spurgin and late transfer Joey Rock will compete for snaps. Both played in Rogers’ opening-game, a 28-14 loss to 4A A.C. Davis last week.

“It is like about as 50/50 as you can get right now,” Cole said. “As an athlete, I think Joey probably has the nod. He’s just bigger, he’s faster, he’s stronger. But Coby has been around so long, he knows the system so well. So his timing is better, his chemistry with the receivers is better. So it’s really hard for us to make that decision.”

“It’s been a battle,” Spurgin said. “At the end of the day, it’s whoever is better, and whoever gets the team going the best, that’s the one that’s going to play. So it’s no hard feelings. You’re putting the team over yourself, and it’s whatever the team needs.”

Regardless of who calls for the snap, there are expectations at Rogers that haven’t been there for decades. Sometimes handling expectations is as difficult, or more so, than taking care of business on the field.

“Our ‘Why’ is to become the best version of yourself by being a part of something greater than yourself,” Cole said. “We are here because we want to just become better as men, but our goal every year is to win league. That’s what we strive for, but we know it’s not going to be handed to us.

“We might have better talent than this school or that school, but you can still lose football games with better talent. You need to execute.”