Brothers and coaches Ben and Travis Brown. Ben, on the left, is the girls basketball coach at Salem Academy, and his brother Travis coaches the boys team.
When boys and girls basketball teams at the same high school have success at the same time, it is usually coincidental.
At Salem Academy, the many connections between the teams have helped to foster a culture of success.
The teams have the unique distinction of having brothers as head coaches of the teams – Ben Brown is the girls coach and younger brother Travis Brown is the boys coach – but they also have a lot of connections beyond that.
“I think it’s really cool how close the two teams are around here, and it’s just like a great atmosphere to be around how the coaches are so close and how we have the bond with the girls team,” Andrew Baker said.
“It’s not just like two separate programs, but we’re all kind of together. We cheer for each other, we support each other in all we do. It’s just a cool environment around here.”
Salem Academy’s girls team has a 14-2 record, 4-1 in the PacWest Conference, and is ranked No. 2 in the coaches poll; Salem Academy’s boys are 13-3, 3-2 in the PacWest and ranked No. 7 in the coaches poll.
The success of one team builds off the other.
“I think it kind of helps motivate us,” said junior guard Colton Daniels. “If they’re doing well, then we want to do well. If we’re doing well, they want to do well.
“I think that it’s kind of like we have a war going on between us to see who wins the most games and goes the furthest. I think it’s a competitive nature between the two of us that really pushes us.”
That the coaches are related is only the tip of the iceberg of the relationships between the teams.
Ben’s daughters Sydney (a sophomore) and Grace (a freshman) play for the girls as do their cousins, Emma Hardy (a senior) and Eva Hardy (a sophomore).
Ben’s wife, Jolyn Brown, is an assistant coach for the girls team. Brandon Hardy, the Browns’ brother-in-law, is an assistant coach for the boys.
“We’re sitting around at Christmas and we’re watching game film or we’re scouting teams,” Travis Brown said. “We’re just a huge basketball family, and it starts with my dad. It just never stops with us.
“We do a big trip every year with the family – we go to like Sunriver, Eagle Crest – and we’ll spend a week over there. We all stay in the same house, our whole family, 16 of us go, or now 17 of us go. It makes it a lot of fun because we talk about what we’re going to do with our teams next year.”
Those aren’t the only family connections.
Salem Academy head coach Ben Brown talks to his players in the Blanchet vs. Salem Academy girl’s basketball game at Salem Academy High School on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2015. Blanchet won the game 56-43.
There are two sets of siblings between the teams with senior Andrew Baker and sophomore Hallie Baker, and senior Ryan Smith and sophomore Aimee Smith.
And Travis points out there are three couples of boyfriend/girlfriend between the teams.
“It’s fun because we get to celebrate together,” Emma Hardy said. “Like we both won our Christmas tournament that we had a few weekends ago, and it was nice that we both had that success and we just got to do it together.”
The current generation of Hardy and Brown children attended Crosshill Christian until four years ago when Emma was about to enter high school.
The family’s deep connections with Salem Academy was part of why the children ended up there.
“They had just started their high school and we wanted our girls and boys to have a bigger high school experience, you know, football games, just a bigger atmosphere,” Ben Brown said.
“Instead of trickling them out one at a time once they got to eighth grade and coming over here, we all decided, all six kids, we all decided to come over here.”
Dana Swartwout, the great grandmother of the current generation of Brown and Hardy children was in the first class of students to attend Salem Academy for all four years of high school when the school first opened in 1945.
Various great uncles and cousins went to the school – great uncle Clyde Brown was the boys basketball coach in the late 80s – Travis Brown played basketball at the school in the early 2000s and Ben Brown was an assistant for the boys basketball team about that time.
When their children transferred to Salem Academy both of the Brown brothers took positions as assistant coaches with the girls basketball program.
Ben Brown took over as coach of the girls team a year ago and guided the team to the PacWest Conference championship and a second-place finish at the state tournament.
Travis Brown is in his first full season as coach of the boys, though he was the interim coach during the team’s state postseason run when it placed fifth in state a year ago.
“I think it’s a good thing because they can work together on stuff, like as far as doing stuff with the girls team and the guy’s team, and there’s families with a boy on the team and a girl on the team,” said senior Shelby Holman.
One of the goals for both of the teams is to have them both reach the point where they qualify for the state basketball tournaments every year and are considered state powers.
To that end, there are large groups of talented younger players on each team.
“Our sophomore group is really big, like we make up a lot of the team, and they have a big junior group,” sophomore Aimee Smith said. “They have a lot of good bonding in the team. We’re really good at playing together.”
Go to any Salem Academy basketball game – boys or girls – and the other team will inevitably take up a large portion of the crowd for the game.
They have a legitimate interest in the game.
“Other teams, it seems like they’re very distant, but our programs unite just enough to get work done,” Sydney Brown said. “Some teams, they only hang out during the sport that they’re in, but even with the boys and the girls, we all like talk to each other and we’re all really good friends outside of sports.”
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6701 or Twitter.com/bpoehler