Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Collier Ogilvie, an alumna of Mountain Brook and recent graduate of Alabama, will be the girls junior varsity basketball coach for Mountain Brook High School.
Collier Ogilvie has had two distinct epiphanies regarding her future over the course of her school career. She calls them “aha moments.”
Those moments changed the trajectory of her life as she knew it. The fact that she will ascend to the role of Mountain Brook High School’s junior varsity girls basketball coach in the fall is not surprising if only the beginning and end of her story are looked at.
Ogilvie can remember shooting hoops with her brother in the backyard as a 4-year-old. She played all the way through high school and began coaching younger teams when she was a ninth-grader alongside Lizzie Jeffcoat in the Over the Mountain league. Ogilvie becoming a high school coach upon graduating from the University of Alabama would seem to bookend that journey perfectly.
Except for those “aha moments” in between. During her junior year of high school, Ogilvie decided that basketball might not be her primary ticket in the future. She quit playing AAU ball and decided she would pursue an art degree from Alabama.
The initial plan was for art to be the primary focus and basketball would fall into a secondary priority. That lasted a few years, until she was afforded the opportunity to coach an AAU team one summer during college.
“You can play basketball, but can you actually coach it?” Ogilvie recalled wondering. “It’s totally different. But immediately after the first game, I knew that’s what I was supposed to do.”
The plan flipped instantly. She spent last fall as an intern with first-year varsity coach John London and will stay on for the foreseeable future. She’s hoping to land a full-time job in the Mountain Brook Schools system and is putting her graphic design expertise to good use on the side with Mountain Brook Sporting Goods.
“A year ago, I never would’ve thought I would go into coaching,” she said.
But the former standout is back on the hardwood, where she belongs.
“I’m really excited because I’ve always played basketball and I love basketball,” Ogilvie said.
The opportunity became available when London decided to make Kyle Ritter — who has more than two decades of experience coaching at Mountain Brook — a varsity assistant alongside Peggy Keebler.
“We want to move [Ritter’s] experience to the varsity bench full-time and allow Collier to learn how to coach with the JV,” London said. “It’s a great opportunity for her to learn and grow.”
Ogilvie said her JV team would be an extension of the varsity team in terms of scheme, terminology and ideals. She’s excited about the direction of the overall program as well.
“I’m really excited to be a part of it, especially with Coach London,” Ogilvie said. “He’s such a great basketball coach and a great person. It’s exciting to see that the girls are going to be able to learn from him more than just basketball.”
In London’s first year at the helm, Mountain Brook finished with a 19-9 record, almost all of those losses coming to top-flight teams, including the runners-up in Classes 4A, 5A and 6A.
He said, “All of those games could’ve went either way. I’m very pleased with that. It’s something we have to build on.”
As for Ogilvie, she hopes to be in London’s position in the future, running her own program. And yes, she’s the daughter of Major Ogilvie, the former star running back at Mountain Brook who led the Spartans to consecutive state titles in 1975-76. Winning is in her blood, but she will aim to make an impact beyond wins and losses.
“A record shows hard work and shows a lot of things behind it, but I really care more about the girls and the people that they will become,” she said. “I want to have relationships with all the girls and be a mentor.”
