Recap The Court

Photo: Stephen Leithwood

Jacob Smith

As Brock Women’s Basketball moves on from head coach Mike Rao after five of the most successful years the program has ever had, I think it’s time to look back on his time with the program and recognize the growth the Badgers have had.

It was the summer of 2018, Ashley MacSporran is no longer the head coach of Brock Women’s Basketball after two years at the helm which saw a playoff appearance in her first year and a 6-18 season battling injury her second year. Brock needed a head coach to turn the women’s basketball program back around, and they found their option on the bench of the men’s basketball team.

Mike Rao had been an assistant for the men’s basketball team and working with Ashley on the women’s side. After a trip to the national championship tournament with the men’s basketball team in 2017-2018, Rao was going to take over the women’s program and try and establish it once again on the national stage,

I was with Rao working for the men’s team in 2017. September 2018 i’m at Brock for meetings about the future of the Brock promotional team and he comes out of practice to ask me if I’d join him and work for the women’s team, and so I did.

Ever since that night I have seen Rao build the Brock Badgers up to perennial national contenders, and i’ve seen everything that went into it, and I want to go over some of it.

One of Rao’s first things he did once becoming head coach, was establish what he had on the team, what he needed and what he could have, which is what he is so great at. Throughout Rao’s time, he always took pride in player development, and ever since his first scheduled individual workout during the 2018-2019 season, he knew the path every player in his program should be on to get the most out of their basketball ability, and the time he put into crafting individual plans for each player truly showed his dedication to developing talent and seeing his players get the most out of their time.

He preached effort and he pushed for people to buy in to what he was doing, and what he was doing worked. The 2018-2019 season saw the team improve to a 11-13 record, going back to the playoffs and getting their first playoff win since 2012 defeating Laurier 54-35 in the first round before falling 81-70 to the future champs McMaster Marauders.

With the return of Melissa Tatti and Jessica Morris who were a part of the team in 2016 before taking a year away, Rao started to put his touches on the team and shaping it to what he wanted it to be, and that took form in his second year once he had a full summer of recruiting.

Rao’s second year was the best year in the women’s program’s history. A 17-5 regular season record turned into a push to win the Critelli Cup for the first time, and Final 8 wins over Calgary and UPEI to take on Saskatchewan in the national championship game for the program’s best ever finish. A year after taking over a team that was on a downward trend, Rao instilled a belief and trust in the future of the Brock Women’s Basketball program, and put together a team dubbed the comeback queens who would push the program to heights it’s never been.

What he did on the court was successful with the team making the semi-finals in four of his five seasons and winning the teams’ first championship, and what he did off the court would lead you to believe the success was earned.

Rao gave Brock everything you would want a head coach to give. He was massively involved in the community having spent so much of his life in that area coaching and teaching, and he lived and breathed the program. If there was something beneficial that the program could get, you can bet he was pushing his hardest for it.

I learned so much about basketball spending every day with this man in his office during my time at Brock, but the biggest thing I learned about the game which gave me insight into how he coached, is that everything has reason.

Every drill he put players through, every motion he added into the offence, every word he spoke in practice, everything fit into the bigger picture of Brock Women’s basketball and the image he was building, and all everyone had to do was trust that the image was being created.

He played those who understood the bigger picture he was painting and how the pieces fit together, and he got results from those who truly trusted that what he was telling them to do would work out in the end.

He got players to trust that giving total effort and buying in to the system he was putting in place would work out, and he got results, year after year. He was an open door for anyone who wanted to better understand what he was trying to do and he left the Brock Women’s basketball program at a level it had never seen before.

We got in arguments almost every day seemingly but we always understood none of it was personal. We had many phone calls about the program. We spent day after day sitting down and talking basketball. Rao is the guy who gave me the freedom to do what I do, and Rao trusted that I had the best for the program in mind, and that will always mean the world to me. Rao helped bring me up, and wow we had a hell of a run.