Barren grad hired at Bracken County

By JOHN VERSER
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW July 23, 2008 03:31 pm

— Deron Breeze, a 2001 graduate of Barren County High School, was recently named head boys basketball coach at Bracken County.
Breeze joins the Polar Bears after helping the Western Kentucky University’s men’s basketball team for the last two years as an undergraduate at the school.
“I feel that I’m ready to be a head coach,” Breeze said. “Coach (Darrin) Horn let me do a lot of things at Western the last two years to help me prepare for this.
“I worked a lot of 12-hour days, sometimes 14 or 16 hours, and I think that made up for that experience. I did a lot of film work and helped with workouts in the summer.”
Breeze thinks that working under Horn, now the coach at the University of South Carolina, helped him prepare for being a head coach.
“Everyone has their own system and beliefs,” Breeze said. “I think the biggest thing that I learned from coach Horn is how to prepare and how to run a program. You need to take care of business in the classroom.”
Breeze has a reclamation project on his hands at Bracken. The Polar Bears were just 5-23 a season ago. They play in the same district as Mason County, a perennial power and the 2008 state champions, but the district tournament is set by a blind draw.
“That’ll be a change,” Breeze said of the blind draw.
Breeze interviewed for the job on July 11 and was hired shortly thereafter. He will coach and teach both special education and alternative education at Bracken.
After prepping at Barren, Breeze played collegiately for one year at North Idaho Junior College. He then transferred to Florida Community College at Jacksonville, where he also played for one year.
Breeze took a year off before enrolling at WKU to finish his degree. He graduated in December of 2007 from WKU with a degree in education. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in special education from WKU.
Breeze and his wife, Whitney, have two children: Braylon, 3, and Trinton, 7 months.
“I started the position last week,” Breeze said. “We had three days of practice and we have three more this week. I’m excited to get things going.”

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