‘We were good together’
Wall of fame inductee thanks teams over the decades for making coaching enjoyable
On Jan. 31, Mike Rao turned 65, much too young for an honour recognizing lifetime achievement such as induction into the Welland Sports Wall of Fame.
But his enshrinement as part of the Class of 2024 on Sunday at Seaway Mall could also be a belated retirement present for the Welland native and basketball lifer.
In early April, Rao decided not to return for a sixth season as head coach of the Brock University women’s basketball team.
“Lifetime achievement? I hope not, I hope I live a little longer. A lot longer,” he said with a chuckle.
However, Rao feels the time is right to step away from the game after coaching hoops at the university level and, before that, for threeplus decades teaching and coaching at Notre Dame College School.
“I think in terms of my mission in coaching, it’s the right time. It’s time for me to start enjoying life,” he said.
And do some travelling, to the family’s cottage at Sauble Beach on Lake Huron and a lot further than that. Rao’s daughter Mikayla is a teacher in Sweden.
“I want to get to see her. I want to see more of Christopher’s games,” he said of his son, the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Niagara College.
“And I’ve got to dedicate some time to my wife. Pam has been the backbone of this whole operation for many, many years.”
Rao led Brock to the silver medal at the Canadian championships in his second season as Badgers head coach, but he is more proud of his first team at the university.
“They were in disarray and that team went .500. We weren’t the most talented, but we melded and that team did extraordinary things,” Rao said. “I didn’t understand the magnitude of what we were doing at the time because I didn’t know the whole history behind the Brock women’s program but they hadn’t won a playoff game for many years.”
Rao recalled he couldn’t understand why “everybody was like we had everything” after the Badgers won their first playoff game.
“I came from a winning program at Notre Dame. We didn’t lose many games, so for me, losing those 12 or 13 games was a lot.”
He credited the players on that Brock team in 2018-19 for “taking the next step.”
“And I think that’s what built what we had over the five years. We were in the national conversation and that was my goal every year that I was there.”
Rao isn’t retiring from coaching with unfinished business topping his agenda. He isn’t disappointed he didn’t lead Brock to a gold medal.
“No, that was never my goal anyway. My goal has always been to take a team and be better at the end of the year than we were at the beginning,” he said. “I have no idea how many games I’ve won, I have no idea of how many championships we won in this.
“Those don’t interest me, they never have. It’s the day-to-day stuff that interests me. I went to work every day so I felt good getting players better at the next level.”
For Rao, there was never a line between teaching and coaching
“I was a teacher. I don’t like the term ‘coach,’ never have,” he said. “That’s why my players don’t really call me ‘coach’ — some guys who don’t know me do, I don’t correct them — but they call me ‘Rao.’
“And that’s it. I was never impressed with status.”
There nonetheless was a hierarchy on his teams, despite the informality.
“Did I have a direction? Yes. The teams that I coached have my vision, and when we all bought into that, it was good,” Rao said. “It was really good.”
“In the classroom, they call me ‘Rao;’ on the court, they call me ‘Rao.’ I always saw myself as a teacher, never a coach.”
Rao makes no qualms about his desire that “at the end of the day, I wanted to win or compete as best we can.”
“I never ever told a team that they had to win a game. Never in my entire career have I said, ‘We have to win this game,’ ” he said. “But I wanted them to compete, so my goal was always to put the best team out there and the best players out there as I saw it.”
Has Rao shut the door on basketball entirely? What if his son recruits him to serve as an assistant coach at Niagara College?
“I’ve always been there for him as kind of an ear. He knows I am someone who is going to tell him what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear,” Rao answered. “I’m always there for advice.
“I watch a lot of his games; in fact, I watch them all, regardless of whether I am there or not.”
Rao doesn’t intend to make a long acceptance speech when he is inducted along with six other individuals and three teams at Sunday’s ceremony.
“I just want to thank all the people who helped me in all those years of coaching. I don’t remember wins, I don’t remember losses, but I remember the people, and I remember what they meant to me and the things that they did for me,” he said. “Not only for me, but for us because we were always a collective.
“I always did have the best players in the league. My players were the best every year, any year, regardless of whether we were 10-24 or 24-10 or 31-2.”
Rao emphasized when he recalls teams that he coached, “I’m not talking about the best basketball players, I had the best group of guys and girls, and that’s why we were successful.
“I also surrounded myself with good people, and that’s what kept me going coaching all the years. “We were good together.” He made a point of singling out David Fucile and Dan Marshall, “two guys who really helped me over the years.”