WOODBURY — This year, a familiar face returned to lead yet another Nonnewaug sports team to success.

Adam Brutting, the Woodbury Middle School ELA teacher and former girls basketball coach at Nonnewaug, just finished his first season of coaching girls high school soccer.

“I’ve coached soccer for a long time, and I just thought the timing was right and the opportunity was perfect,” says Brutting. “So I said, let me see if it’s something that I can get into and enjoy, and it has been a lot of fun so far.”

Two years ago, Brutting retired as the Nonnewaug girls basketball coach after 10 years of leading the team.

“My head was in a place where I was just thinking about my distant future and where I wanted to be,” says Brutting. “I decided to start an advanced degree program for school, and so I started an online program and the amount of work that I had to do [on] nights and weekends wouldn’t allow me to coach basketball at the same time, so I had to make that sacrifice.”

Brutting had to leave the team behind in order to focus on his future. Ellie McDonald, a freshman at the time on the basketball, now a senior on the soccer team, is one of the players who was caught in the crossfire of his leaving.

“I think that he coached basketball for so long that everybody was just used to him,” says McDonald. “He was so fun and he brought so many fun aspects to the team.”

The bond Brutting had with the basketball team was unbreakable, which meant leaving the team to pursue his career goals wasn’t going to be easy.

“That was probably the most difficult part of the decision,” says Brutting. “Especially the girls who were gonna be seniors, knowing that I had had them for three years and I wouldn’t have them for the last year, it was very, very difficult.”

After Brutting’s 10-year commitment to the team, he could not just leave the team without a proper send off.

“I wrote each of them a letter, just encouraging them and just talking about the things I hope they accomplish as a senior,” says Brutting. “I called everybody, all the parents, and had a meeting with all the girls. It was really tough.”

Tobias Denman, who was Brutting’s assistant on the girls basketball team, says that though Brutting left the team, it didn’t really change the vibe and atmosphere of the team when Rebecca Pope took over the team for two years.

“I honestly don’t think the vibe and the culture of the program changed that much because we replaced one reasonable professional human being with another,” says Denman.

After his goodbye, two years later, Brutting is back to coach the girls soccer team.

“I also had him in middle school for track, so it was kind of like a full circle,” says McDonald. ¨Everybody loves Brutting and it’s nice knowing that when we got him that we didn’t get a full new coach that had to learn about all of us.”

Although Brutting is back coaching a different sport, his overall coaching style and his expectations have not changed.

“To put it into a few sentences, he is very focused on the core principles,” says McDonald. “He’s very team-oriented, which I’m really happy about, and he doesn’t like to have favorites or anything. He just has the best interest in us. He just wants us to do good.”

During his two-year break from coaching at Nonnewaug, he not only focused on his advanced degree program, but he also picked up another basketball coaching position at Woodbury Middle School with the middle school culinary teacher, Michael Hadoulis.

“I’m friends with Mr. Hadoulis, and coaching together allows us to work off of each other but also gives us a little freedom of, ‘Hey, I can’t make it to practice today, can you take care of it?'” Brutting says. “He can keep his Cooking Club and I can do some other things that I have going on, too, so it was just an opportunity that popped up and of course, like I said, I really love to coach.”

Of course, coaching a middle school sport is different than coaching a high school sport.

“When you look at the fundamentals and the basics of how to be a good player to create a good team, there’s all those foundational skills – those are the similarities,” Brutting says. “But it is different because high school teams generally have those foundational skills set and just need to hone them a little bit. It becomes much more complex in game-planning, and strategic planning becomes a much bigger deal as you go up levels.”

This year, Brutting helped guide the Chiefs to their first Class M semifinal appearance since 2011. The team also reached the Berkshire League tournament championship game. On the court or on the field, Brutting is there to guide his players.

“I love teaching and I love my job because of the students,” Brutting says. “They are really, really great kids and having the opportunity to coach, it just adds onto all of that.”