Rao ready to relax
Mike Rao’s wildly successful run as the head coach of the Brock Badgers women’s basketball team has come to an end.
After six seasons with the squad, the 65-year-old Welland native has announced his retirement. The former Ontario University Athletics and USPORTS women’s basketball coach of the year and OUA coach of the year went into the season with a conference record of 52-28. Brock looked nothing like a playoff team early in the 2023-24 season but it finished the regular season with a 17-5 record, good enough to place first in the Central Division. The Badgers then lost 73-65 to the visiting Toronto Metropolitan Bold in the OUA quarter-finals.
“I am 65 years old and it is time for me to take a step back and let the program carry on.”
His desire to retire built as the 2023-24 season went along.
“We were rebuilding but a rebuild is hard. The rebuild took a lot of time and effort and it’s the buy-in of the whole team. I knew what I was used to and when you’re in a rebuild it is not a complete, 100 per cent buy-in. I haven’t really experienced that a lot in my career because it was always developmental,” he said. “This year was kind of tough but I can’t complain how well the girls did because we had a very good record. Did we always play the way I would have liked? Definitely no, but it comes with experience.”
Brock has several key players returning and Rao had a strong recruiting year but leaving the program in a great place doesn’t make retiring any easier.
“My age makes it easier to step away,” said the 2024 inductee into the Welland Sports Wall of Fame. “I know the amount of effort that it takes to get a program to this level. I will be quite frank. When I came in, this team was an absolute mess. We built it from the ground up, we had four good years and it was time to build again.”
Rao had been serving as an assistant coach on the Brock men’s team under Charles Kissi for two seasons when he was asked to step in and help then women’s head coach Ashley MacSporran for the last five or six games of the 2017-18 regular season. Brock and MacSporran “parted ways” at the end off the season and Rao became head coach.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Rao said back when he accepted the job. “Obviously I wasn’t their first choice, for sure, so I don’t have any illusion of that. I was at the table and other things didn’t work out.”
In his first season with the Badgers, he led the squad to its first playoff win since 2012.
Rao’s competitive fires will continue to burn but he will look to other avenues to pursue them.
“I do have that competitive fire but my outlets will come from different places. I have it when I go out on the golf course, when we play cards and when we do anything.”
He stresses that he is also ready to relax.
“I am ready to do more things around the house. My daughter is in Sweden and I want to spend more time with her and I want to follow my son (Chris, head coach of the Niagara College women’s team). It gives me more freedom to do that.”
Rao doesn’t have any words of wisdom for the incoming coach.
“The last person they should get advice from is me because they will want to do things their way. When I took the job, I listened to some advice but in the end I realized I had to run it the way I was comfortable with,” he said. “They are in a good place and have a good foundation and I wish them nothing but the best. Good luck.”
Rao is proud of the job he did at Brock
“We were in the national conversation every year and that’s where I wanted to be. We won a national silver and my goal was always to be in that conversation,” he said. “I’m not saying that we always made it and we always were going to be there but it was knowing when a team played Brock, they were going to play a team. We were not a gimme and you had to come in with a game. From Day 1, we were competitive.”
The posting for the job is now on the Brock website.
Among the items listed in What You Need to Succeed on the posting are a minimum of three years of successful coaching experience at the post-secondary or national level or equivalent and a minimum of three years of recruiting experience and knowledge of the Canadian women’s basketball system.
