Why Chad Breeden decided to resign as Mater Dei's girls basketball coach

EVANSVILLE – Chad Breeden called it one of the hardest professional decisions he’s ever made.

After nearly a decade on the bench in different capacities, he stepped down as the Mater Dei High School girls basketball coach on Friday. Breeden spent the past seven in charge of the program.

The issue boiled down to balancing work and coaching. Breeden works as an outside sales representative at ABC Supply and earned additional responsibilities recently. With it likely comes travel during the winter months including a potential window near the state tournament.

Breeden determined it wouldn’t be fair to the program to miss that time in season.

“Work responsibilities have made it difficult for me to fulfill my obligation and duties as a high school coach,” he said. “I love the job. I’ve been trying to make things work. If I’m gone for three weeks during the season, it’s not fair to the girls. It’s not fair for Mater Dei.”

Breeden, 47, served as an assistant to Steve Goans during the 2015-16 season before earning the head coaching position the following year. He finished with an 82-61 record across seven seasons.

The best run under his watch came with three straight sectional championships from 2018-20. Mater Dei also defeated Eastern (Pekin) for the Class 2A regional title in 2019. The Wildcats lost to eventual state runner-up Winchester in the semistate.

Mater Dei has been one of the top programs in the Southern Indiana Athletic Conference in recent history. That continued under Breeden with the Wildcats annually competing for postseason championships. There also multiple athletes who went on to play in college.

“I’ll be the first to admit I made plenty of mistakes,” said Breeden. “I think we had a decent run. I loved my time (at Mater Dei). Some of my past players, it’s weird to say because I’m so much older than them, are good friends now. I have past players getting ready to get married and growing up.”

What also made this difficult for Breeden was having to miss all of last season due to a medical issue.

Breeden started having vision problems over the summer. It reached a point where he had trouble reading jersey numbers while watching his son play Cub football. His doctor recommended a MRI and found a tumor on his pituitary gland.

He had brain surgery on November 28. Breeden would have missed most of the basketball season in the best case scenario so he took a leave of absence. Mater Dei went 12-13 and lost in the sectional semifinal with Doug Blair serving as the interim coach.

Breeden feels much better now and will continue to have ongoing treatment for the foreseeable future.

“The symptoms were subtle,” he said. “I chalked them up to old age. Headaches and irritability. Nothing that would make you think anything different. By end of February, they had most of my levels stabilized. I feel great and was good to go.”

Breeden said one positive will be watching his children (Kate, Caroline, Cole) compete in athletics at their respective levels but didn’t rule out coaching again in the future. He thanked past and present administrators, assistant coaches and players on helping the program succeed. He also thanked his family, including his wife Allyson, for their “support and sacrifice over the years.”

It still made for a difficult meeting with Mater Dei athletics director Joe Herrmann to make it official. Breeden will still support the program and school – his youngest will be a seventh grader – but expressed appreciation for the past seven years.

“I can’t put into words how impactful it is to be a high school coach,” said Breeden. “These parents and kids trust you with a portion of their life that is very important to them especially at Mater Dei. People who have never done it, I don’t think they understand how impactful that it is.

“I can’t stress the impact (the players) had on me. They become like your own kids. When you get to see them graduate and go on to be successful people, that’s just as rewarding as any win I had over the years.”

Follow Courier & Press sports reporter Kyle Sokeland on Twitter @kylesokeland.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: IHSAA girls basketball: Mater Dei coach Chad Breeden resigns