Returning home
Ronald Steele is back where he belongs.
John Carroll Catholic High School provided Steele with the tools to succeed on his winding path since graduating in 2004, after leading the basketball team to back-to-back state titles and winning the “Mr. Basketball” award twice.
He went on to stardom on the basketball court at the University of Alabama, played a few years of overseas ball and over the last three years has had a few brief coaching stints at the high school level.
Now he’s returned to where it all began, before he set off on that trek through the initial stages of adulthood. In June, Steele was named the athletic director and head boys basketball coach at John Carroll.
“It’s really humbling to be back where I started my academic and basketball career,” Steele said. “I’m just excited to be a part of the administration at the place I was a player and student.”
One of Steele’s coaching stints came at John Carroll, where he assisted his brother Andrew Steele with the boys basketball team before taking over the girls basketball team for the 2015-16 season. The Lady Cavaliers had a strong season, as Steele led them to a regional berth.
Steele spent last school year at Class 1A Cornerstone School, a small Christian school in Birmingham, where he served as basketball coach. He led the Eagles to the state semifinals and put that young program on the map.
“I loved Cornerstone,” Steele said. “It was a great situation. I felt like I had one of the best situations out there and [John Carroll] was the only place that would’ve made me leave.”
In his moves from John Carroll to Cornerstone and back to John Carroll, one thing has remained consistent. Steele’s desire to work in a school that instills Christian values, along with building character and developing productive citizens, is something he makes no secret of sharing.
He plans on keeping that an integral part of his basketball program, and now the entire John Carroll athletics department.
“We’re a Christian school, so [a coach] has to have a commitment to instilling the faith component in athletics and be comfortable sharing that with young people,” he said.
Steele learned that many of the things he was taught as a basketball player, and the lessons he has passed on to his own players the last few years, actually apply to all sports.
Sports in general serve as a great medium for sharing life lessons, and Steele’s task as an overseer of all sports at John Carroll will be to ensure each sport has the proper leadership in place to enrich athletes in and out of competition.
“I’m committed to giving kids the best opportunities possible and using sports to be successful,” he said. “That’s my philosophy in basketball and that carries over to every sport. The reason I got into coaching was because of the influence that coaches and administrators had on me.”
Steele hit the ground running with his new gig in the summer and has yet to slow down. Each day brings a bevy of new tasks along with it, and Steele is focused on doing everything within his power to ensure that John Carroll athletics become a mainstay on the radar once again.
He said, “You’re so busy in getting prepared, I don’t even have a chance to have that nostalgic feeling. Every day we try to create a plan to accomplish these things. When I walk in, I’m trying to figure out how we can make our program the best it can be.”
If anyone knows what John Carroll looks like when it’s the best it can be, it’s Steele.