Brandon Myers’ competitive athletic career ended about a half-decade ago when he graduated from Slippery Rock University. The one-time Philipsburg-Osceola baseball and basketball standout wasn’t ready to see his relationship with sports come to an end, though.
“The playing days were over, but I still wanted to be involved, somehow,” the 28-year-old Myers said. “Then I started coaching.”
Myers might not have a lot in common with Terrance Green or Marcus Toomer, but the one thread they share is that they’re all new girls’ basketball coaches at Centre County schools this season.
Myers, who played baseball in college, is back at his high school alma mater, while Green is taking over at Penns Valley and Toomer will be at the helm at Bellefonte.
Winter sports tip off for most county high schools on Friday, Dec. 6.
“We’re going to have a big focus on fundamentals, really understanding the basic things about how to play the game of basketball. I firmly believe helping each player grow individually will help the team grow exponentially,” said Toomer, 33, who was hired over the summer to take over the reins after Adam Gerhart stepped down as coach.
All three of the new coaches come from very different backgrounds. Myers is the one local product, having parlayed athletic success at P-O into a college baseball career. Toomer is from New York City; Brooklyn, to be more precise. Green is from the Philadelphia suburbs.
Of the trio, Green is the only one who already has a head coaching stop on his resume: He guided the Central Mountain girls for three years while he was teaching in the Keystone Central School District.
Since then, Green was hired as a physical education teacher at Penns Valley, where he’ll inherit a program that made it all the way to the District 6 Class 3A championship game and advanced to the PIAA tournament last year in Karen McCaffrey’s second stint with the Lady Rams.
Green was an assistant coach for McCaffrey while also coaching the junior high team.
“Karen let us know in the spring that she was stepping down, and it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to get back in,” the 31-year-old Green said. “I talked to some of the girls to see where their heads were at, then I talked to Rob Irwin, who was her (top) assistant last year to see what he was going to do. He decided he was going his separate way, the girls were interested, so I put my name in.”
In addition to basketball, Green was the head cross country coach at Central Mountain and is the assistant softball coach at Penns Valley. He coached at one level or another with Lady Wildcat basketball for seven years before getting hired in Spring Mills.
Green originally is from Glenside in Montgomery County and played basketball at Upper Dublin High School. He continued his education at Lock Haven University and has remained in the region ever since.
“I always admired the coaches I had growing up,” Green said of his reason to become a coach himself. “Baseball’s my passion. I also ran track and played basketball. I always had an aspiration of giving back. It’s just how I was raised. I always wanted to find something that I could do to give back, and I thought coaching and teaching were the two things that I could do.”
Toomer said he was drawn to coaching for similar reasons.
“My sophomore year in high school, I was the manager for the JV team. I had an opportunity to be really involved with practices, just seeing all the planning that goes in to planning a season. Ever since then, I wanted to learn so much more. The high school coaches I had at the time saw I had an interest and helped develop me,” Toomer said. “Adam Gearhart hired me as a volunteer. It’s always been a dream of mine to be a head coach, and this was a great opportunity to continue to work with those girls.”
While this is Toomer’s first varsity head coaching job, he’s been coaching for more than a decade. He’s been the junior high girls’ coach at Hempfield in Lancaster County, he spent a year on the staff at Dickinson College, and he was a student assistant when he was at York College. He’s also worked summer camps in New York and New Jersey, primarily for Five Star and at Christian Brothers Academy.
He’s currently employed at Penn State. He just took a position as an academic advisor after working six years residence life.
Myers has been involved in coaching almost from the moment he graduated from college, and even before. When he would come home from breaks from Slippery Rock, he would pitch in helping his older brother, Doug, who was coaching the Philipsburg-Osceola girls’ basketball team at the time. Then he assisted Matt Curtis with the P-O boys for two years while handling the elementary program.
He’s also been involved with P-O’s baseball and softball programs. He’s stepping in with Lady Mounties hoops after Robert Sauerwein handled the team for a season.
“I’ve played basketball my whole life. I love the sport. The opportunity to coach something I love is something I really wanted to get into,” Myers said. “We had a really good junior high team, and there’s a good group in there right now. The opportunity’s promising. I think there’s a lot more there than people realize.”
Myers is an accountant at Diamondback Truck Covers, but he could see himself coaching for the long haul. He has some laudable goals for the Lady Mounties.
“When you think Philipsburg women’s athletics, you think softball, you think volleyball,” Myers said. “I really want to put basketball on the course to be at that prestige level.”
