One night during the 2006-2007 basketball season, I remember covering a Fallston girls basketball game and talking with coach Vernon Brown about his players and how proud he was of how hard they were working to improve.

Brown and I talked about that in great detail during the 30 minutes or so that it took me to write my story after the game. We were the athletic director's office, and it was around 9 p.m. It already had been a long day, but Brown never rushed me -- he definitely should have -- and took real pleasure in just sitting and talking about Jess Harlee and his other players.

It's a bit of a tired phrase, but Brown took real pride in and cared about those kids he worked with. Brown loved to point out all the good things his players did, no matter how small, if it showed that they were learning their craft that much better.

He was a coach who really knew how to teach, and that's one reason his teams did so well so often. That was no accident.

I knew that he'd been battling cancer and felt truly saddened when hearing of his death from the disease earlier this month. The fact that the girls soccer team won their state championship last week and dedicated it to him was, to me, both sad and truly fitting.

Here's a bet that Coach Brown is smiling somewhere.

-- Jeff Seidel