Returning to her purpose
Murphy After a 2-1 win at Smoky Mountain on March 27, Murphy girls soccer head coach Kim Brownlee only had to say one thing to get her team excited. And it had nothing to do with the win.
Before the game, knowing the challenge ahead with the 3A Lady Mustangs, Brownlee told her team if they won, she would take them to Cook-Out, a fast-food restaurant that for some has a near mythical quality due to its assortment of cheap food and milkshakes.
After the game, the team huddled and someone asked where the team was going. Brownlee’s response, according to senior Cat Barreiro: “I guess we’re going to Cook-Out.”
Moments like that were something one year earlier, Brownlee wasn’t sure she would have again. After coaching soccer at Murphy for 12 years, she stepped away for 2022 due to a serious health issue. The road back was tough, but Brownlee is finally back to where she wants to be.
“The other day at practice, she made me cry when she said God told her this was her purpose,” Barreiro said. “And that she was meant to come out here and coach us, and be a leader for us.”
‘On the edge of a cliff’
Around 2016, Brownlee started having ringing in her right ear. It was the same way her husband, Don Brownlee, started losing his hearing. They went for an X-ray just to make sure there wasn’t a tumor in her ear, and while it didn’t show one there, one appeared on the edge of the scan.
Kim followed up with her local doctor, who told her she needed to see a brain specialist. That led the Brownlees to Duke University Medical Center, where they met with a renowned master surgeon, Dr. Allan H. Friedman.
After having an MRI, he detected a tumor the size of a walnut in her brain stem right by her spinal cord. The tumor wasn’t active. and since it was near the spinal cord, Friedman didn’t want to operate on it at the time. Instead, he wanted to take an MRI every six months to make sure nothing changed.
The next six years, Kim said, felt like “living on the edge of a cliff.” Any health problem could cause her to worry about the tumor.
For five years, the Brownlees would drive to Durham twice a year to get an MRI, and the status quo remained. That changed in 2021. The MRI revealed the tumor had become active, and Kim would have to have brain surgery.
“The scariest moment in my life was the day the doctor told me that he had to operate,” she said, “that there was activity in the tumor. Because we had been dreading it for years.”
‘Just kept pushing’
In January 2022, the Brownlees made the long trek to Durham, but this time for surgery. Don still remembers some details vividly, especially how weird it was walking through a hospital that was desolate because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only one door was available to enter, and they had to walk all the way to the other side of the hospital to check in.
“There was nobody in this huge hospital,” Don said. “It was just empty hall after empty hall. Really freaky.”
Kim’s surgery was early in the morning, and Don had to wait alone for seven hours due to COVID protocols. The tumor was an ependymoma, and Friedman told him post operation that most of it was able to be removed.
Several other doctors came in after the debriefing and told the couple it was the most amazing surgery they’d ever seen. Friedman cut open her spinal cord and proceeded to unwrap the nerves that had gotten around her tumor in order to remove it.
Kim was discharged from the hospital 24 hours after the procedure, due to Friedman’s preference to get patients out as soon as possible. After a weekend being monitored in a local hotel, she was
discharged and Don started the long trek back to Murphy.
The whole drive, she was laid-back in the passenger seat of the car and moaning almost the whole way. The next six weeks were incredibly tough, and Don actually drove Kim back to Duke because he thought there had been a potential complication.
She had a pseudomeningocele, which occurs when the dura, the outermost membrane that protects the brain and spinal cord, gets a small tear and leaks into the soft tissues of the back. Doctors told her it would go away in nine months. The swelling stuck around until the night before the nine month deadline.
That night, Kim went to bed – and the next morning she woke up and the swelling was gone. It was the first time, Don said, he thought there was light at the end of the tunnel.
But it’s not as if Kim was just sitting around waiting for things to improve. Despite those months being what Don called “pure hell” due to intense headaches and the amount of medication she had to take for her nerves, she kept persevering.
“I would walk around my house,” Kim said. ”Around and around and around I’d go, because I was only supposed to do 10 minutes, dragging my leg along. I just kept pushing. I had a brand-new grandson. I just had things that were important to stay alive, stay functioning.”
‘Don’t take a step back’
Kim’s three sisters all live in Murphy, and her mother along with her two sons are nearby. So as she recovered, she relied on them, as well as her faith, for support. That allowed her to control what she could control, then let God take care of the rest.
Faith is initially what brought her to the area. She grew up in a fishing village in rural Maine
and was a member of the Church of God, which paid for her to
go to Lee College in Cleveland, Tenn. She transferred to Georgia State University in Atlanta and met her husband in the area before moving to Murphy in the mid-2000s, when Don was able to retire early.
Along with her faith and family, coaching has been the other mainstay in Kim’s life in Murphy. After coaching the boys teams since 2010, Brownlee started the girls team in 2017, later switching to coaching only the girls team in 2019 because it was getting too demanding to coach both.
As competitive as she is, the biggest thing for Kim is the relationship she develops with the kids. With this not being a soccer hotbed, the team at Murphy doesn’t always attract the best athletes. She tries to work with every kid who comes through the program to develop into the best player they can be on the pitch, whether they start instantly or grow into it as upperclassmen.
Off the field, Kim wants to teach her players not to settle and to reach toward goals, no matter how big. It’s important, she said, to set a positive example for young women.
“I kind of like to pass on that whole personality of don’t take a step back,” Kim said. “If you have something you want to do, anybody can.”
‘Give them all I’ve got’
As she started to get better, Kim realized she still had the bug to coach. She attended Murphy’s games during 2022, with Don helping her into the stands as she regained some of her mobility.
For her, the recovery wasn’t about relearning how to do things as much as it was adjusting to the new reality. Her left leg has been completely numb since the surgery, so she had to learn how to walk with a leg that no longer has any feeling.
When the team needed a coach this spring, Brownlee stepped in.
“I just felt really lost without the kids,” she said. “I just felt as I’m hollering things in the stands and they’re like, ‘Who is that crazy woman up there?’ I just felt like the game was leaving me behind. I didn’t want to give that up.”
There are three assistant coaches in case Brownlee has any health issues, but also to see if any one of them could take over in the future. With a young team that had nine new players, Murphy took some lumps in two losses to open the season but has gone 5-1-1 since as of press time.
Just like she has in her life since 2016, Kim is taking the season day by day and is always looking for ways to help the team get better. That won’t lead to wins in every game, but she’ll keep pushing the Lady Bulldogs in that direction.
It’s a process, and one she doesn’t see stopping anytime soon. Kim wants to keep coaching as long as she can, unless any health problems or family issues come up. She’s found her purpose and wants to keep encouraging young women to grow.
“As long as God is willing and I’m here, I’m going to give them all I’ve got,” she said.