Brown: ‘It’s an honor to coach at Sterling'

STERLING – After high school, Ryan Brown gave up playing basketball to work 12-hour shifts at a rubber factory.

It didn’t take long for Brown to get back in the game. When he was 20, he earned his first job as an assistant coach. On Wednesday, the 29-year-old officially became Sterling High School’s 15th boys basketball coach.

“It’s an honor,” said Brown, who will teach physical education. “It was an honor to even get an interview at a place like this. There’s so much tradition, and the program’s had so much success the past few years, I was thrilled just to get a foot in the door.”

Brown coached at Annawan the past four years, and led the Braves to fourth place in Class 1A in 2009. Sterling hired him from a pool of 35 applicants, eight who were interviewed to replace Peter Goff, who became Bloomington’s head coach on May 14.

“It became clear before the interviews even started that he’d be someone we’d consider strongly,” Sterling activities director Nathan DeLany said. “We wanted someone who has a passion for education and a passion for basketball. I know that’s what we have with Ryan.”

Brown’s best teams at Annawan featured star players Alex Coppejans and Tanner Carlson, as well as a fast-paced, player-friendly style. Brown will instill the same philosophy at Sterling that he did at the 119-student school – which in March became the smallest to reach the state basketball tournament since 94-student Williamsville in 1997.

“My teams are always in attack mode,” said Brown, who has an 8-year old daughter, Maddy, with his wife Lacey. “Offensively, defensively, whatever we do is trying to keep our opponents on their heels and trying to impose our will as much as possible.”

Brown was 79-44 at Annawan, including a 27-8 mark in 2008-09, when he was named the Quad City Times’ coach of the year. Before that, he was 17-36 in two years at Scotland County, Mo., after a three-year stint as an assistant at Roseville.

He takes over a program that has won consecutive NCIC Reagan championships, going 19-1 in conference play the past two years behind a strong class of 2009 that included Joseph Bertrand, an incoming freshman at Illinois.