Eastern Connecticut State University

Derrick Birdsong returns to the staff of head coach Bill Geitner as a volunteer assistant coach.

Birdsong brings significant coaching, teaching and administrative experience to the program, having coached basketball at the college level at Post University and at the high school level at East Catholic, Newington and Kingswood Oxford and having served as an assistant athletic director at East Catholic.

The East Hartford native previously taught in the East Hartford Public Schools and served as sports education and development manager at the Springfield Legacy Academy.  He is currently the college and career coordinator for the Hartford Public Schools.

In 2019, Birdsong coached the New Haven Heat to the 19U national championship and has also coached current Eastern sophomore Elijah Jean-Guillaume in the New Haven Heat AAU program. 
 
Birdsong comes from a long line of successful basketball players. His uncle, Otis Birdsong, spent 12 years through 1988-89 in the NBA as a 6-foot-3 inch guard with the Kansas City Kings, New Jersey Nets and Boston Celtics, and appeared in four NBA All-Star Games after being selected by Kansas City as the second overall pick out of the University of Houston in the 1977 NBA draft.

Birdsong's cousin, Nykesha Sales is currently the associate head women's basketball coach at the University of Georgia after a standout career at the University of Connecticut and with the Connecticut Sun and Orlando Miracle of the WNBA. At UConn, Sales was a two-time All-America and Big EAST Player-of-the-Year and a 1995 national champion and left as the program's all-time leading scorer. She was an eight-time WNBA All-Star and remains the Sun's all-time leading scorer.

Birdsong earned his B.S. Degree in Sport Management with a minor in coaching from the University of Rhode Island in 2011.