‘Go enjoy your family.’ Kenny Brooks imparts hard-earned lesson to his assistants
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Brooks assigns broad responsibilities to assistants to develop future head coaches.
- Brooks allows assistants family time, endorsing presence for child appointments.
- Research-heavy staff share scouting duties and workloads to advance Kentucky basketball.
It’s not a rare sight to see Kenny Brooks kick Kentucky assistant Josh Petersen out of the office.
It’s new for Petersen, but in his second season under Brooks — and 12th season in coaching — the young assistant does his best to learn something new from every coach he works for.
“Try to take it and put it in your bag,” Petersen said. “Everybody’s different. Every coach you work for is different, but I think that that’s something I go in excited about. is, you know, ‘What can I take? How can I use my time?’ And be grateful for whatever time you have at that spot.”
Petersen’s first assistant coaching job came in 2014, hired by Brenda Mock Brown at UNC Asheville. From 2018-22, he served as an assistant coach under Lance White at Pittsburgh. Petersen then joined Katie Meier’s staff at Miami (Florida) in 2022, and was hired by Brooks after Meier retired.
In Brooks — who said he feels a responsibility to develop his assistant coaches — Petersen gets a teacher who values pro-style practices, independent workouts and excels in Xs and Os. Each of Brooks’ assistants also gets handed a heavy workload, and a set of high expectations.
“I was a young coach at one time,” Brooks said. “And the coaches who really helped me out the most were the ones who gave me a lot of responsibility, a lot of leeway, and I try to put a lot on their plate so that they can be prepared. I think they’re all going to be head coaches one day. And as much as I can prepare them, I feel a responsibility to do that because on my path, I am where I am because of a lot of the things I was taught as a young assistant.”
However, Petersen is also working for a coach who understands how it feels to balance fatherhood with a growing coaching career.
Nearly two years ago, Petersen and his wife, Shelby, became parents to a daughter named Brynn. Petersen said that Brooks — a father of three adult daughters — demonstrates that he “understands what I’m going through,” by pushing him to be with Brynn when he needs to be.
“Just from a personal standpoint, any time you take a job, you want to know who you’re working for as much as you can,” Petersen said. “And I think that that, for me, was huge with Coach Brooks in terms of raising three daughters and having a wife, and understanding that there might be some days out of the season or whatever that I’ve got to run.”
Allowing Petersen to take time with his family stems from lessons he learned as a young coach at James Madison, where, per Brooks, “there were many times I was so busy making a life that I wasn’t living a life.”
For more two decades, Brooks prioritized his career, building success stories at both James Madison and Virginia Tech. It wasn’t until the pandemic put college basketball on pause that Brooks realized how much he had missed.
“...Sometimes, you know, some people want some tidbits (of advice) or some nuggets from me: ‘Hey, what advice do you have for me?’” Brooks said. “And the first thing I tell them is to ‘Go enjoy your family. You know, don’t let that pass you by because one day she’s gonna be 20, and you’re gonna wish that she was 2.’”
That means that, even if Brynn has a doctor’s appointment, Brooks doesn’t want Petersen to miss out.
“Sometimes he comes to me a little sheepishly and says, ‘Hey, Coach, do you mind if I go home?’” Brooks said. “You know, ‘Brynn has whatever.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, get out of here.’... That’s something that I firmly believe in, I will always believe in, is family first, and you want to make sure you’re around as much as you possibly can be.”
It’s not that Petersen is skipping out on extra work — Brooks has assembled a dedicated, research-heavy crew in Petersen, fellow assistants Rad Autukaite, Ciara Gregory and Will Sims and associate head coach Lindsey Hicks.
On the contrary, Petersen’s giving it his all. It just so happens that everybody else is, too. When the entire coaching staff shows up, the job gets done as a team, and there’s room for other things.
“I say it and I mean it, I think I have the best staff in the country,” Brooks said. “The way that they work together. That’s first and foremost. You know, it’s all about the team. Are they willing to sacrifice a little bit of themselves? Because if we win, we all win, and they understand that and they really help each other. They feed off of each other. But they all have great basketball minds in different ways, and so when they are able to scout, they all bring their own flavor to it, with the understanding that it’s all about Kentucky basketball.”
Petersen’s picking up dad reps while on the clock as well, and said that he and Brooks will often discuss the similarities between coaching and parenting. It doesn’t matter, Petersen said “if the kid is a year-and-a-half old, or you’re dealing with a 18-to-23-year-old college kid.”
“There’s a lot of repeating,” Petersen laughed. “And you hope that it sticks, and that’s Parenting 101. Like, ‘Alright, I told you not to do that, we’re gonna say it again.’ But I think that’s huge. (Brooks) understands. I know he knows what I’m going through. He’s never once said, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ Or, you know, every time I’ve asked to do something with my daughter or go to a doctor’s appointment, obviously, time-permitting and the right time of the day, no questions asked.”
