HOOP HISTORIANS
Committed to promoting goodwill through basketball

The first international Hoop Historian, Jimmy Rogers was a fixture at the NCAA Final Four, annually attending the collegiate championship each year.  Rogers was the founder and operator of the Brixton Topcats, one of London’s most respected youth basketball teams.  Born in Wales, Rogers grew up in a Newcastle Orphanage and later joined the Army where he played guard on the 1965 British National Championship team.  Stationed in Germany, he went on to play for VFL Osnabruck, the German National Champions.  In 1968, Jimmy was selected to play on the British Olympic team.  In a true grass roots effort, Rogers started the Topcats basketball club in 1981 with little money, but major optimism, and turned it into an organization with many success stories – including that of former Topcat player Luol Deng, a fourteen-year NBA veteran and multiple time All-Star.  The simplistic upbringings of Rogers exemplified the group.  Despite a now state-of-the-art facility and many success stories, the team has always relied on a humble blue collar work ethic to remain as one of the top youth organizations on the other side of the ocean.