CENTERBURG – It would have been easy for Sky Brusco to cite family reasons when he resigned as Centerburg’s boys basketball coach. But he wanted people to understand why he’s leaving.
Brusco officially resigned at the Oct. 12 school board meeting, just 17 days before the Trojans were allowed to begin practicing.
“I really love my bosses,” Brusco told the Mount Vernon News. “I think Rich Porter (athletic director), Ryan Gallwitz (principal) and Mike Hebenthal (superintendent) are just great guys to work for (and) the board is super-supportive. That’s what made the decision so tough, is that I love coaching there and I love those kids. But at the same time, it’s time for me to put my family first.
“It was a really hard choice because I love those kids and I really wanted to coach. But at a certain point, your family has to come first.”
Brusco and his wife Nikki have always wanted to have a family. But both have busy careers that delayed their personal lives.
“We just sort of put it on the back-burner,” Nikki said. “Then, when we started … we had a lot of problems. We saw specialists and all that. God just didn’t open that door for us to have biological children. But we still wanted to be parents. We still felt like we could give a great home to a child or children. So, we started looking to adopt and build our family that way.”
Adoption has always been something Nikki viewed positively.
“Oddly enough, as a child, I was really interested in adoption because I was in love with Anne of Green Gables,” she said. “That was pretty much my favorite movie. I had Cabbage Patch dolls. You get an adoption paper with them and everything. I wrote an original story that my mom kept in the third grade. So (adoption) was also a positive idea in my mind.
"I just always thought that I was someone that would have a whole passel of my own biological children. On my family side, there are some larger numbers of children that have been born to people. So I thought I wouldn’t have a problem that way.”
In 2018, they were matched in a private infant adoption. But what came of that was a heartbreaking experience.
“The whole process is difficult to begin with,” Sky said. “There’s a matching process that takes place; there’s a lot of red tape, paperwork; there’s a financial commitment. We were matched with a baby. We went to the hospital and the mother decided that she was going to keep the baby, which I think happens quite often.
“Sometimes it happens at the hospital and sometimes the birth mother will change her mind before the hospital. That’s difficult emotionally for the possible adoptive parents. In this case, that was us. We actually went to the hospital and actually held the child. Then, the parent decided to keep the child. That was difficult for us.”
“Driving home with the empty car seat was really hard,” Nikki added.
But Sky learned something about himself during the experience.
“I didn’t think I’d feel the same way because it wasn’t my biological child,” he said. “It was really weird because I bonded almost instantly with that child. I didn’t really understand how quickly that happens or understand the depth of that.”
The Bruscos have been having difficulty finding matches in Ohio, especially for infants.
So they decided to open the search to older children and children outside of Ohio.
“The private adoption (of an) infant has really dried up,” Sky said. “That’s been hit the hardest by (the COVID-19 pandemic). Most adoption agencies have shut down taking new families as clients because there are so many people. … There’s such a backlog of potential adoptive parents that want to adopt infants.”
“On one hand, you’re so excited,” Nikki said. “But on the other hand, your heart is so heavy for her— the birth mother and what she’s going through. It’s definitely a mix of emotions all of the time.
“Sometimes we feel a lot of hope and some days it feels kind of hopeless. You just go on that emotional roller coaster. When it’s something that you really believe in, you have to push through the hard times knowing the end result will be worth it.”
The Bruscos were about to start foster-to-adopt classes when the pandemic began. Those classes were postponed until September, and the Bruscos' finished up in mid-October.
Now, they’re on the internet searching for children in-state and out-of-state with the hopes of finding a match. Even if they find a match, they’ll have to spend time before fostering with the potential child or children, which will involve travel if out-of-state.
That’s why Sky couldn’t continue coaching basketball.
“I didn’t think it was fair to ask my players and coaches to be at every practice and game and I was probably going to have missed some,” he said. “That wasn’t a good look for the school either.”
Sky Brusco had a 37-33 overall record over three seasons as coach of the Trojans. Centerburg was co-champion with Northmor in the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference last season, and Sky had high hopes for this season too.
“This group (of players) that we have this year, they deserve somebody who’s going to be there and is going to give them 100% of their time and effort,” he said. “After thinking about it and looking at what it’s going to entail— especially if we get a sibling set— I just did not think that was right or fair to do to those kids.”
Sky is still a teacher at Centerburg and hasn’t ruled out a return to the sideline in the future.
