Mike Brown
Occasionally, roaming the aisles of an area grocery store, Mike Brown is greeted with a familiar refrain.
“Sometimes If I’m in the store, I’ll still hear ‘Hey, Coach Brown, how are you?’,” Brown says. “That’s someone who knows me from my coaching and teaching days and not as an administrator.”
In Middle Tennessee, particularly around Hendersonville and Sumner County, Brown is known for wearing many hats – all of them in public education service to the youth and the communities.
The former Hendersonville basketball coach, middle school principal and athletics director is still less than a year into his retirement, but he’s also still being recognized for his decades of service.
Brown is one of the 10 TSSAA Distinguished Service Award winners for the 2024-25 academic year.
“There are kids you get close to, the best player on our basketball team that went to the State, Kerry West, right before I took that job and it was his senior year, I married his sister, Christy,” Brown said. “He made the All-State Tournament team, was an All-American at Belmont. Then he was my assistant coach for two years before he took over and coached Hendersonville for 18 years. I guess you could say we have a pretty good relationship. But there’s a lot of kids from that team I still know and see, even had some of their kids in middle school. Some kids you just get really close to and some after they move away and move back, you always have that bond.
“Two summers ago, I flew to Orlando at the invitation of a former player and got to see him get his brigadier general star. We have a lot of kids that are extremely successful and have really enjoyed a lot of those relationships.”
A junior high and high school basketball coach in the region for 20 years, as well as 13 of those spent serving as track coach, Brown also has two decades of classroom experience – physical education and science, which was his minor at the University of Tennessee – as well as rich administrative experience as both a middle school principal and athletics director.
Even after retiring on a full-time basis in 2017, Brown, whose two sons, Ryan and Austin, were athletes in the district, still is less than a full year into his full-time retirement after serving seven years as Sumner County Athletics Director, a post for which one of his highlights includes selection earlier this decade as the Athletic Director of the Year by the Tennessee Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.
“Sumner County had a need for a district-level athletic director because there was no one at central office that solely dealt with athletics,” Brown said. “Being an ex-coach and retired administrator, I was able to retire with the state and can still work part-time, so I did that part-time and was the first athletic director for the Sumner County District. I was on the TMSSAA committee, did that five years, and saw the middle school section really grow. It was a great time.”
TSSAA salutes Mike Brown for his contributions over many years as a coach, teacher, and administrator.
