BILLINGS — Her opportunity might have come sooner than she expected. But first-year Billings Senior girls basketball coach Brooke Taylor is ready to get things going at her alma mater.
“I'm just really excited,” said Taylor, a 2004 Senior graduate who competed in basketball, volleyball and track and field for the Broncs. “I tell the girls I have high expectations of them, and I'm going to push them hard every day. But I have such a good group of girls. I cannot say enough about them.”
Taylor first coached at Senior for her father, Doug Brakke, as a volunteer assistant during the 2012-13 season when she returned to Montana following stints as a junior varsity coach in North Carolina and Tennessee. She also ran the girls basketball program at Fort Campbell High School in Kentucky.
With her burgeoning young family — she and husband Derek have three children — all in school now, Taylor rejoined the staff at Senior for the 2023-24 season as the junior varsity coach for Pete Senger, who was in his first year as a head coach for the Broncs.
The intent was to get a few more years of experience before possibly sliding over one seat, but administrative dominoes at Senior accelerated those plans.
Senger had taken charge of the program when former girls coach Connor Silliker moved into the vacant activities coordinator position at Senior. But after one year as AC, Silliker returned to coaching, joining Drew Haws on the Senior boys staff. Senger then was named AC, leaving Taylor with the chance to take over the program once led by her dad, who will now be her junior varsity coach.
“I thought I had some more time to let the family get a little bit older, but, you know, at the same time, I guess I was ready,” Taylor said. “After last year, I was excited about basketball. I was really excited about how hard the girls were working, and I was really excited to be a part of this program. So I was like, now I have to try. So here I am.”
There is a tradition of success at Senior waiting to be rebuilt.
The Broncs qualified for the Class AA state tournament for eight consecutive seasons from 2011-12 until 2018-19. During that stretch, the Broncs earned a couple third-place finishes and played in the consolation championship three other times, recording a 12-14 overall state-tournament record in those eight state appearances.
There’s been just one state appearance since then, however, that coming in 2021-22 when Senior reached the semifinals but lost out in its next two games. Senior’s lone appearance in the state championship game came when Bozeman beat the Broncs for the 1999 title.
Senior finished 5-16 a year ago and ranked 13th of the 16 teams in AA in both offensive scoring (34.1 ppg) and defensive points allowed (49.0 ppg). Viennah Meyer ranks as the top returning scorer after she averaged 7.2 points per game as a junior last year.
Taylor said the Broncs had a successful junior varsity season last year, mixing the “old guard with the new guard” in terms of the age ranges on the team, and she expects the same makeup this year with five seniors, two juniors and three sophomores slated for the varsity roster.
And she expects her team to be the underdog in most games, a label Taylor wants the team to embrace. She is.
“We're going to work hard,” she said. “We want to outwork the other teams. And I think that that's kind of the theme of what we want to put out to the rest of the opposition is that we are going to work hard. We are going to be the workhorse team. So I feel like hard work and preparation for winning, and all those little things that we're willing to do, can sometimes win out over all the talent in the world.”
Taylor will be the sixth head coach over the past 13 seasons in the Broncs’ program. When she applied for the job, she told her interviewers that she wanted to coach as long as they’d have her. Even when she was a student at Senior, Taylor said, she embraced the diversity — both socio-economic and cultural — that was prevalent in the school hallways.
Despite the diversity, there was always a feeling of community at the school, she said. It’s that community feeling that Taylor wants to tap into as she tries to build a program for the long haul.
“I think we need to be an extension of that on the court, and that's why the girls chose the motto this year for the poster ‘It takes a team,’” Taylor said. "I think that they gelled really well last year. So I think that them coming up with that slogan is pretty cool, because that's been my goal, is that they are a team, and then they gel, and then they work together.
“And so I think that's why the JV team found success last year, and I only hope that that continues to carry into the whole entire program … just that we're a family at the end of the day, and we have each other's backs through thick and thin.”
Senior opens its season at home Friday against Missoula Hellgate.
