At long last, 37 years after he coached his last game at Pineville High School, Bobby Rucker will be honored at the school next week when the school gymnasium’s court floor is dedicated in his honor.
The ceremony, set for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, December 3rd, after a 5:30 p.m. reception in the PHS Library, was originally supposed to be a surprise, Rucker said.
But one recent Sunday, after he had attended a church service at Pineville’s Kingsville Baptist, he was at a nearby hamburger joint when he got the word.
“This fellow comes up to me and says, ‘You know how we’re renovating the Pineville school gym? Well, I’m responsible for putting down the new floor, and I just want to congratulate you because it’s going to have your name on it.’”
Rucker was floored. He had no idea. He later checked with his son-in-law, Doug Garrett, when they went to a PHS football game together, about what he heard, and Garrett confirmed he had heard right.
“I really appreciate some people going to bat for me to get this done,” said the 89-year-old Rucker, who won 451 games in 22 years (1966-88) as the head basketball coach at Pineville before finishing his coaching career with 515 victories. That includes coaching stints at Holy Savior Menard, Forest Hill and Oak Hill. He came out of retirement three times to coach basketball after leaving Pineville, and he finally called it quits after the 2004-05 season at Oak Hill.
Curiously, that might’ve been his best coaching job in his career. He guided the school, which historically struggled in basketball and was more well known for its decorated baseball program, to 23 victories and its first basketball playoff triumph in 25 years. He was named the All-Cenla Coach of the Year.
Rucker was a two-sport athlete at Hatten High School in Moulton, Ala., playing basketball and baseball. As a 6-foot-3 center, the all-star standout led Hatten to a state runner-up finish in 1954. He then played baseball and basketball at Louisiana College, where he was given a full scholarship in basketball by then head coach Morris Osborne.
“We had sharecroppers in my family,” he said. “We didn’t have much money. I couldn’t have afforded college if I hadn’t had a full scholarship.” Baseball was his first love, and he shined a bit more on the diamond at LC than the basketball court, as he and a teammate waged a season-long battle for the team batting title when he was a senior.
The basketball-baseball love affair would evolve at Pineville High School, where he and Ronnie Kaiser were head coach and assistant coach in basketball for many years, and Rucker, a former LC outfielder, was Kaiser’s assistant in baseball for many years.
Rucker got off to a tough start in his first season as Pineville’s head basketball coach in 1966-67.
“We lost our first four games, and our principal then was Wallace “Rip” Barron,” said Rucker. “I told him, ‘If I can’t turn this thing around in three years, I’ll take another job.”
The PHS Rebels finished 12-14 in Rucker’s first season, and three years later, he guided Pineville to 32 wins and the state finals, with a runner-up finish in 1970. A decade later, he led Pineville to 26 victories and another state runner-up finish.
Ronnie Price hit two late free throws to help Pineville advance to the Class AA finals in 1970 with a 63-44 win over Ponchatoula. In that semifinal game the Rebels hit a Top Twenty Class AA record 58.3 percent from the field and made 21 of 28 free throws to advance to the finals against DeRidder. The Dragons of DeRidder prevailed in the finals, 57-52.
Future LSU star John Tudor led Pineville into the Class AAA finals in 1980. He scored 23 points, 17 in the second half, and Randy Lavespere added 15 in a 46-44 overtime victory over Redemptorist-Baton Rouge in the semifinals. Wossman denied the Rebs a title, winning 56-46 in the finals.
Rucker was also Pineville’s head coach when Pineville and Peabody built such a huge rivalry that, to accommodate the numbers of fans wanting to attend, they played some games at the Rapides Coliseum. “It was like each of us would have only one loss in district each year,” he said, “and that would be to each other.”
After Rucker retired as Pineville’s coach, he served as the assistant principal at Pineville Junior High for six years, then taught at Alexandria Country Day for six years.
Before the 2001 season, then Menard principal Dale Skinner and assistant principal Rick Huckaby coaxed Rucker out of retirement to coach at Menard. Skinner had been doubling as principal and head basketball coach and said he wanted to devote his time strictly to being principal.
In two seasons at Menard, Rucker coached the Eagles to 44 victories and consecutive playoff-qualifying seasons. Then he was surprisingly shown the door by Skinner, saying, Rucker said, “The game has passed you by.”
As fate would have it, that opened the way to the so-called “over-the-hill” coach for a brief attempt to help a struggling Forest Hill program before going out in style with a magical season at Oak Hill.
At age 89, and having lost his 59-year-old daughter, Karen Garrett, and his wife, Billie, about a month apart in the dreaded Covid year 2000, Rucker has been living alone at home since.
Nothing will do his heart better than some heart-felt hugs and greetings at next week’s reception and dedication ceremony at the school that’s always been closest to his heart and is just a few miles from his Pineville home.