Soaring to success

By Joe Mason
For the Times

It’s an impressive resume.
Andrew Rogers, the point guard for the Archbishop Ryan High School basketball team, has done it all.
He started as a freshman.
He helped guide the Raiders to the league football playoffs in each of his four years as the quarterback. He is on the verge of scoring 1,000 points with the basketball team. And last week he was selected as the most valuable player of the Catholic League Northern Division.
Rogers insists that he won’t let these accomplishments obscure some key things still to be . . . well, accomplished.
"The MVP thing is great, it’s a great reward, but I haven’t really thought about it much," Rogers said. "We’re still playing right now, so that’s the only thing on my mind. We all focus on the team first, it’s just the way it is here. I don’t have time to think about the MVP thing now."
On Saturday, the third-seeded Raiders blew away second-seeded Cardinal Dougherty, 72-46, in the quarterfinal round of the Catholic League playoffs.
Ryan prepared to meet Monsignor Bonner, which upset Saints Neumann-Goretti in a Southern Division playoff game, on Wednesday night at 7 at the Palestra. (The Times went to press this week before the game.)
Rogers did a little bit of everything against Dougherty, scoring 21 points, tallying six assists and helping Ryan knock off the Cardinals for the first time since the 2001 season.
Rogers was still in grade school that year, and his brother, Bernie Rogers, was a rookie coach for Ryan.
"I told (Dougherty coach Mark Heimerdinger) that if we played enough, eventually we’d win," coach Rogers said. "But we were clicking on all cylinders. I couldn’t ask for much more. As a coach, you always hope that when you put everything together, it all clicks come playoff time, and today it just did. We couldn’t have played much better than we did today."
A lot of that could be attributed to the Raiders’ system.
Since Bernie Rogers took over, the Ryan players have emphasized a team-first approach to the game. In a nutshell, Ryan’s offense features a lot of passes, a lot of screens and, only when the opportunity presents itself, an open shot.
That philosophy was introduced during the 2001 season. It was enhanced when Andrew Rogers came into the school as a freshman.
"My job was to bring the ball up and pass it, nothing else," Andrew said with a grin. "That’s all I had to do."
He always worries about scoring points, but he’s not worried about who scores them.
"In this offense, you have to be unselfish or it doesn’t work," he said. "I’m not unselfish, the team is unselfish. I shoot when I get an open look, but if I don’t have one, I’ll pass it. It’s how we all do it. It’s just the way we’re taught, it’s all about the system."
Now the Rogers brothers have a chance to help Ryan accomplish something never achieved in school history — win a Catholic League championship.
Next year, the younger Rogers plans to play college basketball while doing his best to follow in Bernie’s footsteps.
Which Bernie remains to be seen.
Right now, Andrew is considering two majors. He either wants to be a teacher and coach, like his older brother, or he wants to work in sports medicine, like his father Bernie Sr.
"Yeah, I have some good role models, huh?" said Andrew, who ranks in the top 10 percent of his class at Ryan. "Both seem like really cool jobs that I would enjoy. I’m not sure yet, I still have some time, I haven’t even decided where I’m going yet, but I’ll likely study one of those."
He’d love to be wearing a Ryan league championship jacket.
"That would be the best way to end a great time here," Andrew said. "This year has been great . . . a championship would make it so much better." ••
Joe Mason can be reached at joemason70@hotmail.com