Southern Preparatory Academy

Southern Preparatory Academy is a private boarding and day school in Camp Hill, Alabama. The school was long known as Lyman Ward Military Academy and adopted the Southern Preparatory Academy name in 2019.

The academy traces its founding to 1898, when Lyman Ward and Mary Ward established a school in Camp Hill. Its own history states that the institution was incorporated in 1901 and changed its name to Lyman Ward Military Academy in 1954 as it adopted a military structure. The Encyclopedia of Alabama describes Southern Prep as a private boarding and day school serving grades 6-12 and notes that it was Alabama's all-male official military school until 2019.

The school currently describes itself as a college preparatory school for girls and boys in Camp Hill. Public descriptions state that the day school is coeducational and that the boarding pathway has historically been all-male.