Logan Lober is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Casteel High School for AZPreps365.com.

When Brett Huston retired as Casteel High School’s varsity basketball coach in 2020, part of him thought his coaching career had ended sooner than he had ever imagined. 

The other part was hopeful that he’d get a second chance not only at coaching but at life. 

Huston’s coaching career goes back to when he was 18 years old as a volunteer coach for a local YMCA basketball league. 

He worked as an assistant coach at Queen Creek, Campo Verde and Corona Del Sol before ultimately landing his first varsity head coach position at Casteel in 2015.

But back in 2004, Huston was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, a disease that causes severe pain in many parts of the head and face.

Running a basketball program for 365 days comes with an immense amount of stress, which is something that Huston’s neurologist told him he needed to take out of his life. 

There is no cure for this disease so for over a decade, Huston limited the pain through a nerve-blocking medication called neurontin until he underwent surgery in 2019 to deaden his trigeminal nerve. That led him to the decision to retire from basketball. 

However, Huston became the head coach for Casteel’s men’s golf program in 2020, a sport he coached at the junior high and high school levels and has been pain-free since.

He started the girls golf program at Queen Creek High School and was a head golf coach during his time at Campo Verde as well.

Huston was already an assistant golf coach at Casteel before he retired from basketball and at first, he thought being an assistant coach would be the most amount of coaching he’d be able to do.

“With my medical condition, I was thinking being an assistant would be perfect. But one of the fortunate things about this surgery is it kind of gave me my life back,” Huston said. “It allowed me to continue coaching.”

One of the highlights of Huston’s basketball coaching career was building strong relationships with his players, even after they finished playing.

“For me, it was like watching kids after they graduate, like ‘What are they doing now?’” Huston said. “Seeing kids get married, have kids, that's the kind of stuff that I relish.”

James Huston, Brett Huston’s oldest son, said building those lifelong bonds is one of the main things his dad misses about coaching basketball.

“He really cared about each of those players,” James Huston said. “He tried to make an impact on their lives not only on the court but off the court as well.”

Even though Brett Huston still misses coaching basketball, being the golf coach has allowed him to do things that he couldn’t do when he ran the basketball program.

“Golf is nice because when the sun goes down, you can’t play anymore,” Brett Huston said. “My wife gets to see me for dinner, we get to watch a show or watch a Suns game. … If I was coaching basketball, I wouldn’t be watching the Suns game tonight. I’d be at the gym with my varsity guys.”

Overall, James Huston is happy to see his dad back doing what he loves, even if it’s not with the sport he initially fell in love with.

“It all worked out for the best. It seems like he really enjoys what he does now,” James Huston said. “So I think he made the right decision in the end.”