New goals and a plan of attack was talked about at the meeting that took place on Tuesday between the new Great Bend High School boys basketball coach Tim Brooks and the players.
Coach Brooks talked to his team about what to expect over the summer and into the up and coming basketball season during a gathering Tuesday morning in the GBHS auditorium.
“I’m excited to be here and to be a panther,” Brooks said. “I’m going to bring excitement and energy to the team along with a will to win and a desire to compete and with hard work we will turn that corner.”
As with any change, the players and coach will have some issues they will have to work out before they get to where they need to be.
“I know everything will be new to you and we will have some growing pains, and we will have to get use to each other. But I think we can do a lot over the summer and that should make it easier.” Brooks said. “I am not going to control your whole summer. I am going to work with the other coaches and maybe do some stuff with weights and this time will allow us to get to know each other.”

Coach Brooks
Brooks came from Cimarron where he was head coach for a year, before that he was in Manhattan where he spent 10 years coaching basketball and he spent 15 years in Dodge City where he was assistant coach.
“When I took over in Manhattan it was a struggling program but after two years we won our first playoff game in 10 years and we won our first sub-state game in 10 years, and two years later we went to the state tournament.” Brooks said. “ I am confident in my abilities as well as our assistant coaches’ abilities.”
The new coach is going to hit the ground running and get the team members up to date on all the information before summer vacation.
“Before your out of school for the summer, I’m hoping to have everything planned out for you,” Brooks said. “I plan on sitting down with Mr. (Activity Director David) Meter and getting everything out to you.”
Some of this was given out at he meeting. The coach explained some of his ideas to help the team reach their goals.
“What I think of Xs and Os is this – We are going to do things differently,” he said, “I like to change up defenses to try to keep the other team off balance. So it is my plan to have depth and work hard on defense without sacrificing offense.”
Brooks final words to his team were that he wanted them to dream big and have high expectations for the up coming year and this begins now.
Besides being head basketball coach, Brooks will serve as assistant activities director at Great Bend Middle School and will be a strength-conditioning coach at GBHS.