By FRED KRONER
Brandon Rose’s career path was forged when he was a fourth-grade student at Mahomet’s Lincoln Trail Elementary School.
He just didn’t realize it during the 1997-98 school year.
By the time he graduated from Mahomet-Seymour High School in 2006, Rose had participated in football and basketball as well as track and field for the Bulldogs.
He enrolled at Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, thinking about majoring in criminal justice.
As Rose reflected on his early years of schooling, however, his time at Lincoln Trail kept coming into focus.
“I remembered the teachers I had growing up,” Rose said.
There was one in particular who was an exemplary role model.
“I had Mr. (Steve) Kreps in fourth grade,” Rose said. “He was my favorite teacher.”
Rose decided he wanted to follow in Kreps’ footsteps. As a sophomore at SIU, he changed his major to education. He decided to get into teaching and coaching.
He is now in Year 13 as a fifth-grade teacher at Rochester, which is located east of Springfield.
After a dozen years of coaching basketball in the district, Rose will take over next as the Rockets girls’ basketball varsity head coach next season.
In one respect, he is totally ready.
Rochester’s school colors – like Mahomet-Seymour’s – are orange and Navy blue.
“I have a lot of orange and blue,” added Rose, who is also a fan of the University of Illinois (orange and blue) and the Chicago Bears (orange and blue).
Pursuing a coaching career has been at the forefront of Rose’s mind for decades.
“Growing up, my dad (Ric Rose) was a (basketball) coach, and I went to practice every day,” Brandon Rose said. “I felt lucky to go to the practices and games.”
Now 35, Brandon Rose had a great example to follow in learning the intricacies of basketball.
Ric Rose coached the M-S girls’ basketball program to its first two regional championships (1987 and 1989) and was the first Bulldog coach in that sport to produce back-to-back winning seasons. His career winning percentage (64.4 percent for four years) in girls’ basketball ranks second all-time to current M-S girls’ head coach Garret Risley (72.9 percent) for a program that has been in existence for 46 years.
Ric Rose then joined Randy Sallade’s boys’ basketball staff at M-S and was an assistant for a school-record string of six consecutive regional titles (from 1990-95), a mark which remains unbroken entering the 2023-24 school year.
As he made his way into the working world, Brandon Rose didn’t have his heart set on coaching either girls or boys.
“I love basketball,” he said. “I couldn’t care less which it was.
“There were other sports I would have been OK coaching, but basketball was the one I wanted to do the most.”
When he was hired at Rochester, there was an opening for a girls’ sixth-grade basketball coach in his second year on staff. He worked with that age level for two years and then took over the district’s eighth-grade girls’ basketball program for the past decade, going out with a County championship in his final season.
For 12 years, he also assisted J.R. Boudouris with an ultra-successive high school girls’ basketball program which has captured eight regional titles, five conference championships, two sectional crowns, two super-sectional wins and garnered two Class 3A state runner-up finishes with Rose on the bench beside the head coach. In those 12 years, Rochester teams were a combined 277-108 with nine 20-win seasons, including 27-8 this year.
As he prepares to be the person in charge, Rose doesn’t plan to overhaul the system that is in place.
“My philosophy is that skill-work in general and doing 5-on-5 is great, but you’ve got to develop skills and run drills in practice that will show up on the court (in games),” Brandon Rose said.
“I want to have a lot of the same philosophies (as Boudouris). We’ll still run a pressure man-to-man defense, and get in transition and push the ball down the court on offense.”
In other words, Rose will continue doing what he is accustomed to doing.
As a novice coach with the sixth-graders in 2011-12, he had a ready-made plan.
“It was definitely a new experience, but J.R. gave me his playbook,” Rose said.
Over the years, Rose has had one other advantage. As a fifth-grade teacher, he has had the opportunity to get to know some of his future players in advance of the time they share together on the court.
“They’re familiar with me and I’m familiar with them,” Rose said. “It’s helpful that they know my personality. I’ve known a lot of them before they played basketball.”
Rochester’s varsity program will graduate four seniors (three of whom started) from the 2022-23 squad. Among the returnees with the most varsity experience are Taylor Offer, whom Rose has known since she was in his fifth-grade classroom, and Ellie Gegen.
During his stint as a staff assistant, Rose said he never seriously considered looking elsewhere when head coaching openings came into existence.
“I’ve loved my time in Rochester and I’ve loved the people I work with,” he said. “My wife enjoys her life here.
“There were times I was wanting to be a head coach, but I had to think about family.”
That family also includes a 5-year-old son, Landry, and a 2-year-old daughter, N.J.
Rose’s hiring was officially approved by the Rochester school board on Wednesday (March 15) and he is already listed as the head coach on the school’s IHSA web site.
“I’m excited,” he said. “It’s a dream come true.”
When he was searching for jobs out of college, Rose interviewed in five districts. Only Rochester and Deer Creek-Mackinaw called him back for a second interview.
“It was hard to find teaching positions then,” he said.
Two years ago, Rochester’s girls’ basketball season ended in the sectionals with a 34-33 semifinal loss to none other than a Garret Risley-coached Mahomet-Seymour squad.
In a small-world irony, Rose’s parents and Risley’s parents are good friends who – as it happens – are vacationing together this week in Florida.
Brandon Rose continued to pull for the Orange and Blue after his team’s season was finished in February, 2022.
“I’m tried and true Rochester, but I was rooting for Mahomet, after they beat us,” he said. “When you’re in the game, the other stuff (hometown and family friends) doesn’t matter.”
Rochester (which has a high school enrollment of 793) and M-S (which has a high school enrollment of 943) aren’t currently playing one another during the regular season in girls’ basketball, but Rose wouldn’t be averse to such a matchup.
“Our conference (Central State Eight) is just playing each other once next year,” he said, “so we will be adding some games.”
If the Rockets’ newest head coach ever needs any advice, he only has to look as far as his parents’ home.
“We talk a lot of basketball now,” Brandon Rose said, “and I know I can rely on him.”
