Bradley was a Baker Gator long before he was a Paxton. A proud member of the Baker Class of 1988, he recently stepped down as the Paxton boys basketball coach with more wins than any basketball coach in the history of Walton County.
And while the modest Bradley won’t admit it, he’s as much a part of the coaching royalty to come out of Baker as his good friend Matt Brunson, longtime Jay football coach Elijah Bell or even his good friend and classmate, Baker principal Mike Martello.
Perhaps what sets Bradley apart from the others is his ability to win championships in multiple sports. He led Bobcat teams to district championships in baseball, boys basketball and softball.
But it’s not the number of games, district or region championships he won that Bradley wants to be remembered by.
“It doesn’t matter the sport or winning or losing,” he said. “It’s about how you treat the kids and shape them. I want the kids to remember that I treated them with respect and love all of them.
“I’ve never been about the sports. I’ve never loved baseball, never loved softball, and I never love basketball, I loved the kids.”
The lessons he learned from his basketball coach at Baker, Monty Russell, Bradley applied to his own coaching career.
“He shaped me in the sense that there were things I learned about how to treat the kids,” Bradley said of Russell. “He would get on us hard, but we always knew he respected us.
“Whether you agreed or not, you never, you never felt belittled in that respect.”
Maybe the key to Bradley’s success was he never forgot it was about the kids and respecting them as he developed them on the fields and courts at the tiny North Walton County school.
And it all started at Baker, a larger version of Paxton.
Bradley attended Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church with Brunson, who is a year older than he is. He played basketball and graduated with Martello and the friendships remain to this day.
Bradley credits the work ethic he learned growing up on the family farm in Baker for helping him know the right way to do things.
“Growing up on a farm here in Baker, you grow up and spend all your life here,” he said “It has everything to do with who you are. You learn from your grandparents, the teachers and people that were very influential to me being who I am today.
“I owe everything about who I am to the roots that I have here in Baker.”
Bradley will remain on at Paxton coaching golf and track while serving as the school athletic director and teaching physical education. But after almost three decades of being either in dugout, on the basketball sideline, and many years both, he knew it was time to step aside to spend more time with his children that are grown and have left home.
“It was more of just looking back, reflecting on the years and sacrifice of the family time kind of being compromised,” he said. “It just felt like it was the right time.
“I love kids, I love coaching. I love the relationships that you build. It just seemed like the right time to step away and do something a little bit less stressful.”
One the things Bradley is most proud of is not his success, but the success that followed the baseball team when he stepped down at the coach.
“We won the district championship in my last seven years,” he said. “When I stepped down, they won six more in a row. That lets me know we were doing it the right way.”
Doing things the right way is a reflection of Baker in Bradley’s life. He hopes both the Baker and Paxton communities know how much being a part of each means to him.
“I want the people of Baker to be proud that I’m from here, that graduated from Baker,” he said. “I love this place and cherish my roots here. I want them to be proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish leaving here and being able to do it somewhere else.
“In the coaching world, I want to be remembered as somebody that that gave it everything they had, that I put God first followed by family, schoolwork, sports in that order. That I stayed on my kids, but I loved all of them.”
