No need to panic, there was a plan all along. While it might have appeared that William Monroe was left scrambling to find its new boys basketball coach after Mike Maynard resigned at the end of the summer, the Dragons had their guy all along. Monroe officially promoted assistant Brett Maynard to the head coaching job this week and he’ll take over for his uncle, the first coaching move for the program since the 2006 season.
“It’s an honor to have this opportunity and I’m really excited,” Brett Maynard said. “I’ve been coaching the last three years at the school, and I’ve been working with all the JV kids coming up, I know them pretty well. We’ve got five seniors that played meaningful time to replace, but we should be able keep going. I’ve got a lot of confidence in this group coming up.”
Since the 2012 school year, Brett Maynard has been an assistant for baseball team. Three years ago, Maynard joined up to help the Dragons basketball team as an assistant while also taking the JV job. In his time as an assistant with the basketball team, the Dragons have made the playoffs in each of those seasons, despite moving up from Group 2A to Group 3A two years ago. Previously, Maynard served as an assistant for his father Greg, the boys basketball coach at Albemarle. Darren Maynard, also his uncle, is the head boys basketball coach at Western Albemarle.
“It’s pretty cool to be able to be a part of that now, obviously I owe a lot to them, have learned a lot from them,” Maynard said. “A lot of the terminology will be the same (for this team) so there won’t be a lot of change but I’m going to put my own stamp on this team too, do some things I believe in. But at the end of the day it comes down to fundamentals, playing team defense.”
Brett Maynard played high school basketball at Albemarle, where he scored over 1,000 points in his time and holds the boys single season 3-point scoring record, and career 3-point record. He held the single season scoring record until last year when Austin Katstra broke it. Maynard went on to continue playing basketball at Bridgewater College where he graduated in 2009 with a degree in Health and Physical Education. He is currently a teacher at Ruckersville Elementary.
Under Mike Maynard, the Dragons program returned to its best basketball since the mid-90’s where they won a state championship. After going 3-20 in 2006, he finished with a record of 153-79 in nine years. Under his tenure four different athletes scored 1,000 or more including Mike Roach (’09), Desmon Shaver (’11), Markel Williams (’13) and Jeff Early (’15). Since the 08-09 season, the Dragons missed the region playoffs just once and advanced all the way to the Group 2A final four in ’13-14.
“I’m really looking forward to watching Brett coach,” Mike Maynard said. “He played the game, he’s got a great basketball IQ and he gets along well with the kids. Obviously basketball runs in his blood and I’m sure he’s going to be a great coach, do a great job.”
Monroe opens up its season on December 1 with a road trip to Orange County.
