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After John Brown stepped down as Colonial Forge’s head football coach last week, one logical question cropped up: Would his father Bill decide to step down as well after serving eight seasons as the Eagles’ defensive coordinator?
Bill Brown answered emphatically.
“I’m done,” the Virginia High School Hall of Fame member said.
After 281 career victories and nearly 50 years of coaching high school football both as an assistant and a head coach at a combined five different high schools between Prince William and Stafford counties, Brown decided it was time to call it quits once his son resigned his position to pursue an athletic director’s job.
Since starting out as an assistant at his alma mater (Gar-Field) in the early 1970s, Brown’s only break from football came from 2002-2006 when he spent four years in administration, first as an assistant principal and then a principal at Forest Park High School in Woodbridge.
“I’ve got plenty to do,” Brown said. “I play a lot of golf. I’ve got a garden and a workshop and I have a wife.”
Although he was not the head coach the last eight seasons at Colonial Forge, Brown still had responsibilities that required his attention.
“Even as an assistant, you help with the weight room and 7 on 7,” Brown said. “It’s not hard, but it’s time consuming. It’s all about development and you have to plan around that.”
This fall, Brown and his wife Gail are considering taking a trip somewhere, something that was impossible to do while he was coaching.
“This kind of frees me up,” Brown said.
Brown, who turns 75 this August, took a year-by-year approach to returning as an assistant at Colonial Forge with an eye on a self-imposed deadline. Years ago, Brown told himself that he would not coach past the age of 75. He reached that goal once John made his decision.
The two have coached together since their time at Hylton. Bill then helped John in John’s final season as Freedom-Woodbridge’s head coach before taking the Colonial Forge head coaching job in 2007. Bill led the Eagles for 11 seasons, going 108-36 in that time before John took over in 2018.
Bill also was the head coach at Potomac and Hylton, where he started both programs. In his 20 seasons coaching at the two schools, he posted a combined 173-60-1 record with five total state final appearances (two with Potomac, three with Hylton), which included back-to-back Group AAA Division 6 titles at Hylton in 1998 and 1999.
