Coach Robert Brown
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Christiana Ciolac

Coach Brown with Loyola High School athletes. [Video]

Just by looking at it, you know what the smells like. The squeaks from the rubber shoe bottoms on the varnished floorboards. It's basketball, high school basketball, and for this man it's life.

It's been a couple of decades since Robert Brown was the talk of this town, since he was the big man at Northwestern high, since he was all-state, since he was captain of the all public school league team.

Twenty-one years is a long time and a lot has happened in those years to Robert Brown.

"Until I was on my knees with a gun to my head, getting ready to end it all, is when my spirit came in," Brown said.

"You were going to end your own life."

"I was going to end it, because I didn't have any other answers but that," he said.

Coach Brown

To get where we're going, we've got to go backwards, back to 1979, back to the boy with the withered right arm who was all-city and all-state in a game that demands nearly perfect conditioning, back to 100 scholarship offers to a high school athlete to had a lot of trouble learning.

"Back in the 1970s, they didn't have any technical word called dyslexia. You were just labeled as being slow and in some cases you would most likely be placed into a special ed class," Brown said. "Or you would get caught up in the mix with the rest of the classes and normal kids and some fall through the cracks, and in this case I fell through the cracks."

During practice

For a time, Robert Brown's athletic ability seemed to be enough, but the grades kept falling, and instead of climbing the ladder, he was slipping through the rungs, even in junior college. Then one very bad day, the ligaments in his left knee tore and his dreams snapped right along with them.

"It was real difficult to handle knowing that this is the only thing that I have ever loved, because of my educational problems, basketball was it for me," Brown said. "My family, my mom, but now that's gone. And so depressed, got with the wrong crowds, ended up on drugs."

As they must, several years of drug and alcohol abuse took a toll on Robert, a marriage, a successful business both gone.

He came home to Detroit to care for his ailing mother, to make his second wife proud of her husband, and to find himself.

He found a new high school, Loyola High School, and he became Coach Brown.

"Part of my job being not only physical education instructor and the varsity basketball coach, but counselor, big brother, a friend," Brown said.

"I have an open-door policy to these young men that when I see something going on, I won't hesitate to get in their faces, because I know they can do better. We'll have a big birthday party for you. We're going to have cake and ice cream."

During practice

The coach has always been close to his mother. In fact, he was at her bedside every day through her long battle that she has now lost to Alzheimer's disease. It was a daily ritual, wrenching painful moments as she slipped away from the love of his whispered words.

His heavy heart really only lightened by the boys of Loyola who were finding a way to win. He sees himself in their eyes. He sees his dreams in their young agile bodies. He sees into their future through the disappointments of his own past, because Coach Brown has truly been there and all the way back.

"This is my therapy, taking care of these young people. I never got a chance to go to the next level, to play basketball. Now, I have a great opportunity to send kids to the next level," Coach Brown said.

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