LAFAYETTE – Longtime East Bay girls basketball coach Scott Espinosa-Brown died this week after a nearly three-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 69.
Espinosa-Brown was a beloved coach in Contra Costa County, where he led Campolindo to three North Coast Section titles in the mid-1990s. He got his start in coaching at Diablo Valley College and was most recently an assistant at Acalanes in 2023.
In 2022, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer – two seasons after he was hired at Acalanes – but continued to coach as he helped the Dons capture an NCS Division II championship that same year.
“He knew that he was helping them beyond basketball,” Acalanes coach Margaret Gartner told the Bay Area News Group on Thursday. “Coaches, you know, we get caught up in the X’s and O’s and the wins and losses, but he always just knew it was about making the players better people.”
In an Instagram post, author and Espinosa-Brown’s sister-in-law Cheryl Espinosa Jones said, “I will miss the way … he fathered his kids and step-kids without ever considering whether he shared a biology with them. And by the way, such a great basketball coach that the (Golden State) Warriors couldn’t stop sending him stuff.”
As an assistant at DVC, Espinosa-Brown coached Gartner before becoming the head coach at Campolindo. After the 1999 season, Espinosa-Brown was not brought back by Campolindo, but maintained coaching jobs at St. Mary’s College and DVC before becoming an assistant coach at Carondelet with Gartner in 2006.
Gartner briefly retired in 2019, but returned to coach at Acalanes a year later and brought back Espinosa-Brown as an assistant.
“He always said, ‘If you end up somewhere, give me a call,’” Gartner said. “When Acalanes opened up, he said he was retiring from teaching and that he wanted to do this.”
Though he was an intense coach who demanded a lot, Espinosa-Brown was revered for his ability to connect with his players.
“He just has this aura,” Allison Keener, a star on the Campolindo championship teams, told the Bay Area News Group in 2023. “He can be very hard on you — when I went to play in college everyone was talking about how hard it was and I was thinking, ‘This is easy compared to what I was used to.’ But he’ll also come up to me and say. ‘I love you Alie.’ and give me a big ol’ hug. I get emotional thinking about it.”
Espinosa-Brown was reluctant to enter the women’s sports realm when he first got his start as a coach, but grew to love coaching his girls teams.
A father of eight, which includes five girls, Espinosa-Brown quickly learned how to connect with young women.
“I had a terrible attitude about coaching girls,” Espinosa-Brown told the Bay Area News Group in 2023. “I thought I was a guys’ coach.
“If they don’t know that you like them or appreciate them or love them, they’re not going to perform to their fullest. It’s my job to ask those questions, be available. Boys have that shield on them that society told them to have. I think girls are easier to coach into a team, into a singular body.”
When asked what she learned most from Espinosa-Brown, Gartner said, “Just the way he handles mistakes. I learned to call a timeout when something good happened. Or to stop practice, not to correct, but to encourage something that you want to see more of. It’s kind of the opposite of what most coaches do. It’s a hard thing to get to be a habit, but that is now something I do in my coaching.”
