Dream job might be pushing it, but Joel Branstrom’s new coaching gig is a sweet deal.

Branstrom, who has been an assistant boys basketball coach at Lawrence High the past six years, will be the head girls basketball coach at Olathe Northwest when the school opens next fall. The opportunity to be the program’s first coach was incredibly appealing.

“That’s something that a lot of coaches would love,” Branstrom said. “I’m just excited to have an opportunity to coach girls’ basketball. Every time I coached basketball camps in the summer, I regretted not being able to keep coaching them. Especially with the girls I had, because they worked so hard.”

Still, the Kansas University graduate and former men’s basketball player will be sad to leave Lawrence — and he won’t be the only one.

“I’m very sorry to see him go,” LHS head boys coach Chris Davis said. “But I’m happy to see him start the next phase of his career.”

Branstrom, who started as the sophomore coach in 1997 when Davis was the varsity assistant, should be prepared for the head-coaching challenge.

Branstrom, a native of Half Moon Bay, Calif., played at KU from 1994 to 1997. He worked as a paraprofessional, then was hired as a biology teacher at West Junior High. He’ll teach biology at Northwest.