Nik Hall is a student at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism assigned to cover North Canyon by AZPreps365.com

Even from a young age, coach Levon Brown knew he had an intense love for sports. His original love was football. But Brown credits his grandfather as the one who pushed him into basketball, a push which has given him momentum into the rest of his life and has slowly led him to a head coaching position at North Canyon.

One night after making the high school football team he came home excited to tell his family. He called his grandfather and his grandfather told him to turn the pads in because football wasn’t his sport. Later, he was visiting his grandfather who gave him a basketball and told him to go and practice. He was so upset that he went outside and just threw the ball in the bushes near the hoop. His grandfather told him to not come inside until the ball was found and even gave him flashlight to help him find the ball.

Once back inside, his grandfather told him, “Right now you can’t see it, but this game is gonna open up doors for you. You can’t see it now, but it will.”

His grandfather wasn’t wrong.

Thanks to friends who reached out to him, Brown went on to play basketball at the collegiate level, and overseas in Europe as a pro.

“It opened great doors from there,” Brown said. “I got the opportunity to travel the world. I saw different parts of Denmark, I was in Germany, I saw Ireland, and I was in cold Switzerland. But even before then, it opened doors for me just before I went to college because it allowed me to be to travel and see different college all over the states. I’ve been very blessed to have been able to do that. I don’t think I ever would have been able to do that without the game of basketball.”

Once he returned to the states after his professional career, it was his mother that encouraged him to get into coaching.

 “It will always be that my players, my family, will come first for me,” Brown said. “When it comes to coaching and the game of basketball my players come first. I care about them and that will never change. If I ever get to a point where I see this as business first, then I’ll step away. I love this game too much.”

This love of the game is what drew players such as transfers Mae Dieguez and Jaida Steward to North Canyon.

“Coach Brown made the team feel like a home,” Dieguez’s mother Amy said. “He showed Mae a lot about team spirit, working together and being a family. Seeing the way he coaches and seeing the environment really convinced me to have Mae look more into transferring.” 

Brown remains humble with everything he’s accomplished in his life. “I was very blessed and very fortunate,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to be a young man from the Midwest, from the hood, so to speak and just have the opportunity to be able to play this beautiful game of basketball, travel the world. And this is all thanks to my grandfather.”