Taylor Langley to coach Brighton boys basketball team
BRIGHTON – Taylor Langley sees it this way: He won’t have to struggle with a rebuild in his new role as Brighton boys basketball coach.
His first impressions of the Bulldogs during a summer presentation at Saginaw Valley State University encouraged him.
“I’m very excited,” Langley said. “Coach (Mike) Griest and the staff – and most of them stay with me – have done a great job. I’m excited to keep working on it. As a coach, my workload has never been fuller than it is today. There are some great kids in Brighton who have a chance to play basketball at the next level. I just hope I can help support them to achieve that goal if that’s what they set out to do.”
Langley takes over a program that has gone 53-31 over the past four seasons. The Bulldogs return three of their top five scorers from a team that has gone 8-3 over the past 11 games after a 4-9 start.
Langley comes to Brighton after serving as a college head coach for eight years at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and two years at Graceland University in Iowa.
While working as a trainer at Graceland, he moved to Iowa in the hopes that his wife would find work as a nurse anesthetist. There was no opening, however, so she and the family’s young child remained a nine-hour drive away in Michigan.
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Langley returned to Michigan and got an entrepreneurial opportunity in Novi. The family moved to the Brighton-South Lyon area when Langley rejoined the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan and began looking for job openings.
When I saw that Brighton’s job was available, I was speechless.
“Brighton just popped up on the job board,” he said. “I thought, ‘You can’t be serious!’ John (Thompson, Brighton’s sporting director) and I got in touch. We met, talked about life philosophies and sport and then he invited me for an interview. I didn’t hesitate for long.
“Coaching is no longer my profession, but it is still a great passion and a way to serve and give back to the community. I have over 20 years of experience from countless failures that I have learned from. I feel like I can share it with young men and hopefully have a positive impact on their lives on and off the field.”
Langley graduated from Almont in 2002, but had no plans to become a coach as a child.
“Like most high school kids, I had no clear direction and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he said. “I was a good high school athlete. I had a few opportunities to play Division III football, but didn’t want to spend that much money on a private school at the time.”
“I was trying to figure out life. My dad said, ‘Why don’t you come coach with me and see if you like it?’ I fell in love with it immediately. I fell in love with the connections and relationships and the positive impact you can have on people. I never really looked back. Even in my professional life outside of coaching from a business perspective, it’s still all about relationships, still all about taking care of your people and making sure you create a quality workforce that wants to stay with your company.”
Langley coached at UM-Dearborn from 2014-15 to 2019-20 and at Graceland from 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Prior to his head coaching stints, he was an assistant coach at Davenport University for four years and at various high schools in Michigan for six years.
Contact Bill Khan at [email protected]. Follow him on X @BillKhan
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