The Taylorville School Board Held their monthly meeting last night and discussed a consideration to terminate Taylorville High School’s Boys Basketball Coach, Ryan Brown. 

The results of Coach Brown being terminated reached a NO vote from the board. However the entire board didn’t agree with letting Coach Brown stay employed. Board Member, Tonya Bowsher, chose to abstain, while the rest of the board showed a 3 – 3 vote, meaning that considering one member also abstained, not enough people voted yes or no This caused the motion to fail to carry. Based on that result, Coach Brown gets to keep his position at Taylorville High School and will continue coaching boys basketball there.

The community showed strong support in keeping Coach Brown, but there were also a few members who were against Brown keeping his position.

Chuck Martin, 1976 THS graduate and former Taylorville athlete was in attendance. Martin spoke highly of Browns coaching career and stated that Brown was “born to coach”.

John Williams, one of the community members who filed a formal complaint, was also in attendance. Williams states that a friend of his, who is a father of a current THS player, told Williams that his son came home one day and had made a statement about Coach Brown. According to Williams, this statement he heard from his friend, stopped him “dead in his tracks”. After strong consideration, and meeting with other families in the community to discuss if something should be done. After that conversation with other families, Williams chose to make a formal complaint to the school board. 

Taylorville Mayor, Bruce Barry, was also at last nights school board meeting and gave a positive speech in support of Coach Brown. Barry spoke highly about Coach Brown both as a person and as a coach.

Zach Woodall, 2021 Graduate and former player for the Taylorville Tornadoes, says his brother wants to quit basketball, despite how passionate about the sport he is, due to alleged ridicule and negative talk from Coach Brown.

Also present was Coach Brown himself, who also had a chance to speak to the community and the board about this situation. In Coach Brown’s statement he said that he has always had an open door policy, and that he wasn’t even aware of some of the issues that have arose until this meeting was called. Brown promises that if there is ever a problem that he is aware of he will fix it.
    
 

Coach Brown is set to remain as the Taylorville High School Boys Basketball Coach.