Decorated Boise basketball coach retires after 20 seasons. What does she plan to do next?
One of the most successful high school basketball coaches in Idaho hung up her whistle last week.
Boise girls basketball coach Kim Brydges publicly announced her retirement from coaching Thursday, ending a 20-year run at the North End school. She led the Brave to a 361-139 (.722) record, 16 state tournament appearances and 12 state tournament trophies, including a pair of runner-up finishes.
“I feel very proud of what we accomplished,” Brydges said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman. “I’m very happy for the relationships that I’ve made. I’m content with that.”
Brydges, 49, said she stepped down to focus on moving into a principal or vice principal role and using her administrative degree. She plans to spend one more year as an English and video broadcasting teacher at Boise before looking for an administrator position.
She most recently led Boise to a 23-4 record and a state runner-up finish last month. Boise also won a fourth straight district title under Brydges, the longest streak in the 6A Southern Idaho Conference in 29 years.
But Brydges said her favorite memories don’t come from any big win or trophy.
“There are so many of my former players who are really impressive professionals in their fields,” Brydges said. “That’s probably the most fun — when they want to hit me up, go for a bike ride or grab a beer when they’re in town. That’s the stuff that’s more fun than any particular win or loss.”
The longest-tenured coach in the SIC graduated from Boise State in 1998 and still ranks among the Broncos’ career leaders in points (20th), rebounds (eighth) and steals (sixth). She completed her student teaching at Boise before moving to Centennial and coaching under Emery Roy, the state’s all-time leader in wins (817) and state titles (nine).
A short stint in Colorado followed before returning to Boise for the 2003-04 school year. She took over the Brave program two years later, building it into a model for consistent success.
Boise leads the 6A classification in state tournament appearances (16) and trophies (12) in the past 20 years. Coeur d’Alene is the only other program in the ballpark with 14 trips to state and 10 trophies in the past 20 years.
But while Brydges is known for all her success in the win-loss column, Capital girls basketball coach Matt Creech said her largest contributions came off the court. He said Brydges welcomed him as a young coach when many others gave him the cold shoulder. Unprompted, she even shared a game-day itinerary when his first team made a state tournament play-in game and needed to travel to North Idaho.
“To win at the level that she has is impressive,” Creech said. “But what a lot of people don’t see is how much work she does organizing the senior all-star game and the summer league. She’s taken on so many roles to grow girls basketball in the past 20 years.”
Brydges and Timberline coach Andy Jones battled for the top spot in the 6A SIC for most of the past seven years. Jones said whenever he faced Boise, he knew his team was in for a test against a well-prepared opponent that executed and played hard on both ends of the floor.
“She is someone who did everything well and the right way,” Jones said. “… She knows how to develop kids from a younger age. She always worked with kids coming to Boise when they were younger, and she had a great system in place.
“She had a good pipeline because she knows how to prepare kids and takes the time to do it.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 4:39 PM.
