Welcome New Assistant Athletics Director Both Long

Today we highlight our new Assistant Athletics Director, Coach Both Long, whose work in coaching, athletics, education, and social justice allows him to bring a wealth of experience to his new role at Brewster. Born in California and raised in Lowell, Mass., he graduated from Boston College before embarking on his teaching career. He enjoyed teaching and coaching roles at St. Mark’s and Beaver Country Day schools in Massachusetts and the Roycemore School outside Chicago. But when he decided to pursue a full time coaching career, he headed south to Texas. “I moved to Houston and worked as an assistant coach on the women’s semi-pro soccer side, where our focus was to get these women their pro contracts,” he shares. “I also worked with the youth program in the city to drive recruitment and work with coach development and how we can best use our pedagogy to support these kids on and off the field.”

Coach Long follows the mantra “social justice through sports,” noting that the sports environment is an organic starting point for us to learn about what it means to coexist in a community and work toward a common goal. “It champions that idea that diversity really does give us strength,” he says. “And when a team member is in need of help or is in some sort of pain, it’s the whole team’s obligation to feel that with their team member and work toward a solution. Sports has a lot of the real-life trials and tribulations that come with growing and learning.” 

In recent years, Coach Long has enjoyed taking a look at how he can use his experience as a coach educator in soccer and broaden that reach to all coaches and all sports. “I think there’s a lot of common language and goals in athletics and education, and I wanted to pull on that thread a little bit more.” That’s when he returned to Roycemore as their athletic director, helping them build an athletic program from the ground up. “It was a lot of fun finding the connections between the athletics program and other areas of the school.”

Now, as part of our community, in addition to coaching Boys’ Varsity Soccer, Coach Long will work with Christopher Brown on Brewster’s DEI programs and teach Spanish. He lives in Estabrook with his partner Megan, who works remotely as a marketing director for Growing Home, an urban farm that works to provide fresh produce and career opportunities for families on the South Side of Chicago. 

In his off hours, you can find Coach Long rock climbing, practicing yoga, listening to music, reading, and cooking. We had to ask, what are his thoughts on Texas BBQ and Chicago deep dish pizza? “Deep dish is overrated,” he told us. “It’s basically breaded lasagna.” (Pause for our Chicago readers to gasp.) He feels differently about BBQ (“it’s serious in Texas!”), but is quick to add that with Houston’s incredibly rich and eclectic community of immigrants, “you’d do yourself a disservice if you only got BBQ in Houston, because there are so many restaurants from other cultures.” 

“Parts of Chicago are incredibly diverse, too,” he says, “and that showed me a lot about what I love about living with other people and other communities. I have a curiosity to really get to know a community and what makes people tick.”

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