Scott Espinosa-Brown has long found sanctuary teaching basketball, perhaps now more than ever.

“It’s something to look forward to every day,” Espinosa-Brown said in a recent interview. “I cross the threshold of that gym and I’m not thinking about my Kaiser appointments or the medications or anything along those lines. It’s glorious. It’s cleansing.”

An assistant coach for the Acalanes High girls basketball team, Espinosa-Brown was treated to a celebration last week for his 68th birthday after the Dons beat Heritage 77-38 in a North Coast Section Open Division consolation game.

“He was pretty excited,” Acalanes senior guard Emily Du said. “He said he’s never lost on his birthday.”

Acalanes (21-7) was seeded No. 7 in the Northern California Division I Championships and will host No. 10 Pinewood (16-11) Tuesday at 7 p.m.

For a lesson in inspiration and perseverance, Acalanes players need only look down the bench as Espinosa-Brown pushes aside true adversity and continues his life’s work — coaching, teaching and empowering girls to become “strong women.”

After retiring from teaching in 2020, Espinosa-Brown joined the staff of head coach Margaret Gartner at Acalanes and was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer two years ago. He had coached Gartner as an assistant at Diablo Valley College before going on to become head coach at Campolindo and winning three state championships in the early 1980s.

Espinosa-Brown later coached on Gartner’s staff at Carondelet through 2014, and she coaxed the community icon back into the gym when she took the job at Acalanes. He missed most of last season from the debilitating effects of chemotherapy. A new drug regimen has Espinosa-Brown back on the court and savoring every moment while at the same time adding to the incalculable number of lives he’s touched as a coach and educator.

“We know basketball ends for everybody, but we want to teach them to be strong women out there in the world, able to deal with anything,” Gartner said. “He’s a daily reminder that life’s a battle too.”

The lessons have been absorbed by players both present and past.

“He always says he’s not coaching basketball, he’s coaching life,” Du said. “That’s always stuck with me. Everything we use in basketball — the grit, resilience — you use it in your life. I always think about that.”

Espinosa-Brown was originally reluctant to divulge his cancer diagnosis, but his wife Katherine, sister Tracy and Gartner convinced him to open his heart to those whose lives he has touched.

A GoFundMe page was organized by the Lafayette Girls Basketball Foundation to help offset the considerable costs associated with his treatment and has raised nearly $71,000. Tributes from former students and their parents in both the basketball realm and as headmaster at The Seven Hills School in Walnut Creek, where he was known as “Mr. E-B,” have filled the comments section.

The Lafayette Girls Basketball Association also hosted a “Cancer Awareness” game between Acalanes and Campolindo on Feb. 11 to help raise funds.

“My wife has done such a good job with me on trying to let all that stuff in, especially at this time in my life,” Espinosa-Brown said. “It’s just beautiful.”

With that in mind, Espinosa-Brown pushes aside negative thoughts even as those close to him realize the daily grind is challenging and more painful than he will admit.

“I’m having way more good days than bad days,” Espinosa-Brown said. “I’m about nine months removed from chemo and on a medical regimen that allows me to coach basketball, walk the dog, take 8,000 steps a day. I feel good right now. I’m knocking on wood.”

A father of eight, including five daughters, Espinosa-Brown in his youth recalls his late sister Heather being the best female athlete he’s ever seen.

“She could high jump 5-8 in the eighth grade and won a co-ed race every year including boys from the fourth through the eighth grade,” Espinosa-Brown said. “But there were no leagues for her to play in at all.”

Still, Espinosa-Brown didn’t warm up to coaching girls until he worked at Walnut Heights Elementary in Walnut Creek.

“I had a terrible attitude about coaching girls,” Espinosa-Brown said. “I thought I was a guys’ coach. Then Kim Bachman’s dad asked me if she could join the boys’ team.”

Bachman, it turned out, was his best player. Espinosa-Brown trained her into high school, where she excelled at Las Lomas and earned a basketball scholarship to USF.

“He was hard on me, but it made me a better player,” Bachman said. “He always pushed you and thought you could do better. It made me better, but he also made a connection with me and had such confidence in me that it made you push yourself.”

Espinosa-Brown found that coaching girls was his true calling.

“If they don’t know that you like them or appreciate them or love them, they’re not going to perform to their fullest,” Espinosa-Brown said. “It’s my job to ask those questions, be available. Boys have that shield on them that society told them to have. I think girls are easier to coach into a team, into a singular body.”

Connections have been formed with countless former students and players who look to Espinosa-Brown not just as a basketball source, but as a life coach and a conscience of sorts, a positive influence in a constant search for improvement and empowerment.

Alison Keener, a star player on the Campolindo state championship teams, remains in touch at age 42 although she lives in Atlanta and works at Oracle after playing in college at James Madison and going to graduate school at Georgia Tech. Espinosa-Brown, who served as a minister at her wedding, attends important events for former players on a fairly regular basis.

“He just has this aura,” Keener said. “He can be very hard on you — when I went to play in college everyone was talking about how hard it was and I was thinking, ‘This is easy compared to what I was used to.’ But he’ll also come up to me and say. ‘I love you Alie.’ and give me a big ol’ hug. I get emotional thinking about it.”

Whitney Livermore was a history student of Espinosa-Brown’s in middle school, attended his basketball camps and has long considered him a mentor. As an educator herself, she remains in touch.

“He is one of the first adults that really saw me for who I was,” Livermore said. “I felt like he cared that I grow and develop to my utmost potential. He’d give me appropriate acknowledgment when I did something well, but always wondered if I could do more. He felt I was capable of more than I knew.”

In teaching girls to become strong women, Espinosa-Brown sees daily practice battles as preparation for the future.

“Are you not going to be denied? Where do you want to go?” Espinosa-Brown said. “And if something’s not working, are you going to say something about it?

“I got a Facebook post the other day from a former player — she’s 31 now — and she said, ‘Coach, I just wanted you to know I stood up in a meeting and said, ‘I think we have to go in a different direction.’ She was proud, and I was too.”

Keener, whose love for basketball runs so deep she and her husband Kory named their child “Kurry” after Stephen Curry, hopes one day her nearly 2-year-old daughter can connect with Espinosa-Brown.

“He said my husband and I could coach her until the seventh or eight grade,” Keener said. “Then Scott gets her from eighth grade on. I would love to make that deal. I hope Scott has a lot more years left.”

Acalanes Boosters would like to thank Jerry McDonald with the Mercury News and East Bay News for this article. Thank you for supporting Acalanes coaches and athletes.