Good Sports: Corey Brownsberger loving the small school setup at Meadow Heights

Meadow Heights boys' basketball head coach Corey Brownsberger directs his team during the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament Dec. 26, 2019, at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.

Southeast Missourian

Good Sports is a column featured weekly in the Southeast Missourian and on semoball.com. It is primarily designed to showcase people who have impacted the sporting life of Southeast Missouri, so that readers may get to know them more fully. Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Today: Corey Brownsberger, 30, head coach, Class 2 Meadow Heights boys’ basketball (41-35, .539), entering his fourth season later this fall on the sideline for the Panthers. Previously, he skippered Class 1 Leopold, compiling a 7-62 record over three years.

You’ve coached small schools, but you come from a small place too.

In my 2008 graduating class at Class 1 Montrose High (Kansas City) area, there were just 12 of us. I love coaching in small schools because that’s what I know.

Say a word about your playing days at Montrose.

I was an average player, a role guy. I wasn’t fast nor big, but my best attribute was, if I got open, I could shoot. I had success shooting treys. In my sophomore year, Montrose was 26-4 and got to the Elite Eight. I was the seventh man on the team. Everybody had a role and we never griped about it. I know how each one of my kids feel because in my own experience, I know what’s it is like to play the whole game and what it is like to sit on the bench. This helps me be real with my players.

You come from a line of coaches who led programs at both Meadow Heights and Leopold.

Yes, our little fraternity of three - Sam Sides (recently retired Saxony Lutheran girls’ coach), Carlton Thoma and me. We all coached hoops at both schools.

You had a rough go right out of college when you went to Leopold.

Agreed. We struggled as our record shows. The kids there worked hard but they were young. I was learning how to be a head coach on a day-by-day basis. Woodland was tough for us especially. I did meet my wife, Kristie, at Leopold, and she was born and reared there. She’s now in her second year of teaching math in Jackson. We have a child, Kennedy, who just turned two.

In 2017, there was an opportunity to go to a bigger school.

The Meadow Heights job came open when (Coach) Nick Hermann decided to go to Chaffee. He wanted to get back into coaching football. It felt like a good step in my career.

Is there a “Brownsberger” style of play?

No, I adjust based on our personnel. My first year at Meadow Heights, when we went 18-8, we were fairly big with guys 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-3. We tended to play inside and slower, sort of a Norman Dale approach, if you remember the movie “Hoosiers.” We ran a lot of sets in the 2017-18 year. More recently, the team is guard-oriented with a more free-flowing motion offense. Let me put it this way: I tell the guys to let the ball find who’s open. The (opponent’s) defense will give us something almost every time we come down the court.

Are there things you insist on from your players?

Yes, there are non-negotiables, things that don’t change. Be fundamentally sound, work hard, be unselfish, outhustle the opponent. If we do those things, success will find us.

Have you had coaches who’ve shaped your approach?

Two. My Montrose coach, Mike Arnold, got me thinking about making coaching a career. I caught Arnold’s love of the game. Kim Anderson, who was at Central Missouri State in Warrensburg, my alma mater, was also influential. I didn’t play for Anderson, but I was his student assistant. Not long after I graduated in December 2013, Anderson went to Mizzou.

At a small school, coaches have to do a little bit of everything.

At Meadow Heights, I teach 7th-12th physical education, I’m the athletic director and I’m the junior high and senior high boys basketball coach. Comes with the territory.

You’re such a young man and who knows where life will take you, but you really seem to like the small, rural setting.

It’s what I’ve always known, as I said. At Meadow Heights, just like Leopold, I can know the kid from kindergarten all the way up through high school. I can track a young man for all those years, and this is how you can build a program. Also, fans are really passionate at this level and that’s neat.

What else would you like us to know about Corey Brownsberger?

I’m very emotional. I will cry in a heartbeat. I really, really didn’t like saying goodbye at Leopold, for example, but I knew it was time to go.