The name on the list that jumped off the page

UAB announced its 2026 Athletics Hall of Fame class on Tuesday, recognizing five former Blazers whose careers shaped their respective programs. The class spans nearly two decades and five sports: Aaron Johnson in men's basketball, Ivana Bozic in volleyball, Rodregis Brooks in football, Carmen Guzman in women's basketball and Paul Rosner in men's tennis.

The last name on the list was the one that jumped off the page.

In the spring of 1992, I was a student assistant in the UAB sports information office. The men's tennis team was one of my assigned sports.

The tennis program had never been more than a footnote. UAB had never sent a team to the NCAA championships. Never had a nationally ranked player. Nobody in Birmingham was paying attention to UAB tennis, and nobody had a reason to.

Derek Tarr was changing that. Tarr had been an All-American at Auburn and a professional who reached the top 100 in the world. He was building UAB's program with international recruiting — players from Germany, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland — and his roster was stacked. The anchor was Frank Schaffner, a junior from Leimen, Germany, who played No. 1 singles from the day he got to campus. And the freshmen were winning matches they had no business winning.

One of them was Paul Rosner.

Rosner was a South African who started his first season with three consecutive losses. Then he won 18 in a row — a UAB record. Then 22. By the end of that season, the streak reached 26 consecutive singles victories, a record that stood for years. "We were a nothing school," Rosner told the Birmingham Post-Herald in February 1993. "Who's UAB? Nobody's heard of UAB."

My job was to make sure people heard about UAB.

I did the media guides. I wrote the match reports that ran in the newspapers. I pitched the local television and radio stations. And the tennis team made my job easy — they kept winning. Their play was spectacular and unprecedented at UAB. All I had to do was make sure people were paying attention. UAB went 22-2 in 1991-92, won the Great Midwest Conference championship and climbed as high as No. 24 in the national rankings. The Blazers were beating programs like No. 25 San Diego State, Auburn and No. 23 South Alabama. A school that had never appeared in the national tennis conversation was suddenly in it.

I worked hard to get the team on the front page of both Birmingham newspapers — the News and the Post-Herald. I pitched the story and landed them on local television news. I got the entire team invited into the studio of Matt Coulter's afternoon drive-time sports talk show, where they held court for the better part of an hour talking tennis in a city that lives and breathes college football. My memory isn't as sharp as it used to be, but I'm fairly certain the photo UAB used for this week's Hall of Fame announcement is one I took during that era.

By the 1992-93 season, UAB was ranked as high as No. 7 in the country. Schaffner was No. 9 nationally. Rosner was No. 16. Mike Kirsten was No. 18. Three players in the top 20, playing schedules that included No. 1 USC, No. 7 Mississippi State, No. 10 Texas, No. 17 Tennessee and No. 16 Arkansas. Tarr built the schedule that way on purpose. "The difference between this year and last year is this year we've got the schedule," he told the Post-Herald. "We probably have one of the toughest schedules in the country."

The previous season, UAB went 22-2 and the NCAA selection committee left them out. That wasn't going to happen again. UAB won 20 matches, won the conference championship — I drove the van to Cincinnati for that one — and this time the NCAA had no choice.

UAB was in.

And then the draw came out. The Blazers' first-ever NCAA Tournament match would be against Alabama. In Athens, Georgia.

It was the biggest match in program history. UAB had never beaten the Crimson Tide — Alabama led the series 6-0. But No. 14 UAB (20-4) against No. 8 Alabama (18-4) was not a mismatch. Alabama coach John Kreis called the Blazers "the most motivated team in the tournament."

It was a spectacular match. The singles split 3-3 — Kirsten, Rosner and Vaughan Snyman won their matches for UAB. In doubles, Schaffner and Rosner took the first set from Alabama's nationally ranked No. 4 pair, 6-1. They were in control. The whole team was in control. Then the match moved to center court because of approaching darkness, and the momentum shifted. Alabama survived tiebreakers in the second sets of two doubles matches and then ran the third sets 6-0 and 6-0.

Alabama 5, UAB 4. Season over at 20-5.

"I thought we had them all the way," Tarr said afterward. "Then they turned it around on us just like that."

It was heartbreaking. But the loss does not define what that program accomplished. Look at the bracket from that tournament: the top seed was USC. Then UCLA, Georgia and Stanford. UAB was in the field with all of them.

Rosner kept climbing. That fall, he and doubles partner Snyman won the SkyTel National Clay Court Championships in Jackson, Mississippi, beating Jon Leach and Wayne Black of USC in the final. "This is one of the major college tennis championships in the country," Tarr said at the time, "and as far as I can determine the first national championship for UAB in any sport." In 1994, Rosner and Snyman advanced to the NCAA Tournament semifinals. In 1995, they did it again.

Rosner finished his UAB career as a three-time ITA Doubles All-American. He turned professional in 1996, won an ATP World Tour title in Bologna, claimed 11 ATP Challenger Tour titles, reached No. 62 in the world doubles rankings and competed in 13 Grand Slam draws — including a run to the third round at Wimbledon in 1999. He played seven years on tour before returning to Birmingham, where he coached at Birmingham-Southern College and later became head tennis director at Mountain Brook Club.

He is the second member of those early 1990s UAB teams to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Schaffner, who was inducted in a previous class.

The four other members of the 2026 class are just as accomplished within their programs.

Aaron Johnson was one of the greatest point guards in UAB basketball history. He led the nation in assists in 2011, earned AP honorable mention All-America honors, was named CUSA Player of the Year and guided the Blazers to the NCAA Tournament. UAB retired his No. 1 jersey — only the fourth men's basketball player in program history to receive the honor. He played professionally overseas for eight years before returning to UAB's coaching staff.

Ivana Bozic became the standard for UAB volleyball. A two-time AVCA All-American, she earned CUSA Tournament MVP honors in 2006 while leading the Blazers to their first conference tournament championship and first NCAA Tournament appearance. She finished her career with more than 1,000 kills and 1,000 digs.

Rodregis Brooks was an AP second-team All-American defensive back and return specialist during UAB football's formative Division I era. He earned CUSA Special Teams Player of the Year and became one of the first Blazers drafted when the Indianapolis Colts selected him in the seventh round of the 2000 NFL Draft.

Carmen Guzman was the 2006-07 CUSA Player of the Year in women's basketball, a two-time first-team All-CUSA selection who became one of the most decorated guards in program history.

The 2026 class will be formally inducted Friday, Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. at The Florentine in downtown Birmingham.