If you drive past the baseball field at Cooper High School, you’ll notice a big blue sign listing the numerous accomplishments of the Cougars’ baseball program, including Class 5A state championships won in 1987 and 1988.

But entering the 2022 season, it’s been 11 seasons since the Cougars won a district championship and five seasons since they last made an appearance in the regional quarterfinals of the state playoffs. Former head coach Cody Salyers resigned at the end of the season to take the head coaching job at Peaster High School, leaving the job open.

It didn’t take long for someone who grew up watching those legendary Cougar teams before playing for Cooper himself to show interest in the job; Brandon Stover. Yes, that Brandon Stover, who starred in both football and baseball at Cooper in the late 1990s before an All-American career at Abilene Christian University, followed by 14 years as an assistant coach at ACU. Stover had just finished his fourth season as an assistant coach at the University of Southern Arkansas when the Cooper job came open.

After finishing his season at Southern Arkansas, he interviewed for the job in Abilene and was named the head coach on June 21.

“The chance to come back home was a big factor in my decision to pursue the job,” he said. “And the fact that it was at Cooper made it even more appealing. This is a place where I invested a lot of time as both a student and an athlete, and I want to build this program back to where it should be: a playoff team every year with a chance to be one of the best teams in the region and see what happens after that.”

As an 8-year-old, Stover was a fixture at Cooper games, so much so that a photograph that appeared in the Abilene Reporter-News from a Cooper playoff game in 1988 shows Stover sitting on top of the home dugout behind head coach Andy Malone. That was his perch most of the season watching his favorite player, former Cooper and Texas A&M shortstop Jason Marshall, who went on to play in the Kansas City Royals’ organization before eventually becoming the head coach at the University of Texas-San Antonio.

“Jason Marshall was my idol as a kid,” Stover said. “He was a shortstop and I was a shortstop. Our families knew each other. Jason was a great role model, not just in how he played baseball, but also the kind of person he was and is. He gave me Cooper stuff and sent me stuff from A&M when he was playing there. He was a great role model and someone I owe a lot to for what’s happened in my life and career. I was invested pretty heavily in that 1998 team. They lost some guys from the 1987 team, but they still had a great team with Scotty Pugh, Scott Malone, Jason Marshall, Jason Satre and some others. I have really vivid memories of watching that team.”

And bringing that flavor back to Cougar Field is part of Stover’s overall mission.

“In a lot of ways, it feels like there’s some things I need to live up to, whether it be what Andy Malone did or Lee Driggers (state finals appearance in 1993) did here,” Stover said. “I played for Jim Mavroulis and we had a couple of really good teams. I’ve talked to our team on multiple occasions about the history of this program and that we have one of the best baseball traditions in the state and that it’s our goal to get back to that spot. When you come into this program, those expectations are going to be there, and I’ve tried to lay out those expectations to our team.”

Turning the corner might not happen overnight, but Stover is in this for the long haul. His wife is the librarian at Abilene High School while their daughter is at Mann Middle School and son is at Austin Elementary School.

“Eydie is at Mann and she’ll go to Abilene High with Kate, but Gavin has said he’s going to be a Cougar,” Stover said, “so we’ll really have a house divided. But Kate is loving what she’s doing and she’s back to her roots, too, at Abilene High. It’s been great to be back home. It’s changed a lot, but in some ways, it doesn’t seem like it’s changed at all. We liked where we were in Arkansas, but it wasn’t truly our home. Abilene has always been home. Coming back here to be at Cooper and to have our kids in the district and able to take advantage of the opportunities the AISD provides them is special for all of us.”