For Head Coach Brad Seaman of the boys varsity basketball team, basketball and coaching have been an integral part of his life for as long as he can remember.
His journey into becoming a basketball coach began as a freshman in high school, becoming an assistant coach to his father, who coached a sixth grade team. He continued this role throughout his high school career, assistant coaching two sixth grade, one seventh and one eighth grade team throughout his time in high school.
Over his 19 total years of coaching, he has coached a multitude of teams, including but not limited to the middle school teams he assisted as a high school student and his current role as the head coach at KO. Between those two bookends, he coached myriad teams on both the girls and boys side, including a position as an assistant coach at Brimmer and May, a private school in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
Coach Seaman’s involvement with the KO boys varsity team began seven years ago, when he began as an assistant coach for the program. After a brief two years as the assistant coach, he entered his current role as the head coach, a position he has held for the past five years.
Returning to a fairly normal season following COVID-19 related challenges of the 2020-21 season presented an unique set of opportunities and challenges for the team, ones that Coach Seaman was able to lead his team to meet head on. “The team faced challenges of a wide variety of talent in the teams we were playing against; sometimes we played class C schools that were struggling and then we had to gear up to play a very good class A school,” Coach Seaman said.
Despite any challenges that the season threw at him and his team, much of the season stuck out to Coach Seaman. “The beginning of the season is always fun,” he said. “We beat a few class A teams, including Avon Old Farms early in the season and we won the KITS which was awesome because we were able to have fans return after not being able to host them due to COVID last year.”
Coach Seaman led the team to tremendous success across the season, not only winning the KITs but leading the team to an impressive 15-6 record and a Quarterfinal berth in the NEPSAC Class B championship.
As a coach, Coach Seaman finds equal, if not greater, value in the games lost as the games won. “Towards the end, we lost some games late but they were against really tough teams, and I saw a lot of growth within those games,” he said. “It may just sound like a coach trying to make everyone feel better, but we learned and improved much more in our losses day to day than when we were winning. Every time we lost, we came in refocused and ready to go.”
Returning for next year, Coach Seaman has high hopes and strong goals for the 2022-23 school year. “I’m looking for continued growth,” Coach Seaman said. “Every year seniors leave so we’re sad to see them go, but if you look at our roster, we’re returning a strong core of players.” With this strong core having the offseason to workout together and bond as a team, Coach Seaman hopes to have a tight knit and talented team coming into the next season. “One of our advantages as a day school is that we get to be around more often,” Coach Seaman elaborated. “While schools like Avon Old Farms or Loomis have players all over the country that go away, or they bring in post-grads, we know who is coming back.”
Coach Seaman has truly brought success to the KO boys varsity basketball team, and he hopes to continue that trend.
