Assistant basketball coach leaving Riverhead for Utica College

Riverhead High School assistant coach Jalyn Brown is heading north next month to Utica College, where she’ll be a graduate assistant coach as she pursues a Master’s degree.

Brown, a standout Blue Waves point guard and captain of the 2012 L.I. Championship team, returned to Riverhead after college to become an assistant coach for the girls varsity basketball team and head coach for the JV team.

She was hoping for an appointment as head coach of the Blue Waves varsity team after longtime coach David Spinella retired from the job, but it was not to be. In addition to her duties as  an assistant coach in Riverhead, Brown has been working for the Riverhead Recreation Department and Brookhaven youth basketball.

Turns out, Brown loves coaching as much as she loves to play the game.

“I would really like to pursue a career in coaching at the college level,” Brown said in an interview this afternoon. “I reached out to a lot of coaches. I got the call Friday afternoon from the head coach at Utica.”

Brown, who studied physical education at C.W. Post, said she will pursue a Master’s degree in health administration at Utica.

She was a five-year varsity player for the Blue Waves, scoring more than 1,000 points in her career. A two-time all-county player, Brown became the first Riverhead girls basketball player to accept a basketball scholarship in more than a decade. She averaged 16.4 points per game in the Waves’ 23-1 2011-2012 season, her senior year. She went on to help to LIU-Post Pioneers win the East Coast Conference title.

This winter, Brown organized the first-ever Riverhead girls basketball program alumni game, bringing together alumni from Blue Waves teams going back to the 1984 L.I. Championship team. She said today she hopes to continue working with the booster club to make the alumni game an annual event, which raised money for the girls basketball program.