On June 28, Ohio prep sports lost one of its foremost ambassadors.

Bruce Brown, of Strasburg, died at the age of 70 after a battle with liver cancer.

Brown has a long history as a basketball coach, an athletic director, and a member of the Ohio High School Athletic Association, most recently as Ex-Officio of the Board of Directors. He was active until just prior to his death.

In addition to his duties with the OHSAA, Brown was Executive Director of the Ohio Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and was a representative on the National Athletic Administrators Association.

Among his many stops as a basketball coach was Bucyrus High School. Brown was the head coach of the Redmen for three seasons — from 1991-1994 — the last also as athletic director. Don Cooper was the AD for Brown’s first two years at Bucyrus.

“We stayed in touch,” Cooper said. “He was the executive director of the OIAAA. The last time I talked to him was when I was inducted into the Athletic Directors Hall of Fame. If you mention Bruce Brown to me, I think of organization, very intelligent, a people.”

Prior to arriving in Bucyrus, Brown had head coaching stops at Franklin Heights, Maumee, Massillon Jackson, Middletown, Washington Court House, and Grove City. Sandwiched among them was a three-year stint as an assistant coach at Bowling Green State University (his college alma mater).

“I think Rand McNally wanted me to be their poster boy at one point,” Brown joked at the time of his hiring at Bucyrus. “I’ve certainly had my opportunities in the state of Ohio.”

Brown was an intense coach and fully immersed in basketball. Though his record at BHS didn’t necessarily reflect it, he was a great basketball strategist, probably beyond the hoops IQ of the Bucyrus program at the time.

I compiled his stats each weekend for a couple of years and spent two days with him and his team at a basketball camp at Kent State one summer. As animated as he could be on the sidelines and in practice, Brown was, as Cooper described, “a people person” off the court. He gave me a personal tour of the Kent State campus, including the site of the infamous Kent State shootings of 1970.

“There are physical mistakes and mental mistakes,” Cooper said. “He couldn’t tolerate the mental mistakes.”

Brown had two more head coaching gigs after leaving Bucyrus. He spent a couple of years at Fremont Ross before moving on to Uniontown Lake. It was there that he finally put down roots.

At Lake, he was both head coach and athletic director. Brown was in the Blue Streaks’ system from 1998-2014. He won numerous awards, among them Ohio Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame award for 200 wins, Northeast Ohio Athletic Administrator of the Year, and the National Coach Educator of the Year.

Brown is survived by his wife, Cindy, four children, a sister, a brother and two grandchildren.

“What a loss. What a great person,” Cooper said. “The OHSAA and the OIAAA are really going to miss him.”

While he didn’t accomplish what he set out to do in his three years here, those in Bucyrus who knew him realized that we were better for his having passed this way.

We sadly say good-bye to an old friend.