Oral History Program Randy Rahe Interviewed by Michael Thompson 6 July 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Randy Rahe Interviewed by Michael Thompson 6 July 2022 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Rahe, Randy, an oral history by Michael Thompson 6 July 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Randy Rahe Circa 2010 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Randy Rahe conducted on July 6, 2022 at the Stewart Library by Michael Thompson. Randy speaks about his early years in Iowa and how his passion for basketball developed over time. He also discusses his time as Weber State’s head basketball coach and shares his philosophy of success. Also present is video technician Connie Lopez. MT: Today is July 6, 2022. We are in the Stewart Library, Room 122. My name is Michael Thompson and I'm conducting an oral history with Randy Rahe, who is the former head basketball coach for the men's basketball team at Weber State University. The audio-video technician is Connie Lopez. So just to begin, when and where were you born? RR: I was born in Algona, Iowa. I grew up in Bancroft, Iowa, but born in Algona, which is 15 miles away from my hometown. Closest place to a hospital, so small little town; grew up on a farm outside of small, little town of 1500. But yeah, that's where I was born in Iowa, and born and raised right there on the farm. MT: Okay. Where in Iowa is that, like how close to Des Moines? RR: If you looked at Des Moines, go straight north of Des Moines about three hours, and it's just about 30, 40 miles from the Minnesota border. So North Central, I guess, is the best way to put it. MT: Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about early growing-up life? Elementary school, high school, hobbies and that. RR: Yeah. I went to a Catholic school, you know, K-12, all the way through. Had a great, great childhood. I had four brothers and one sister; three older brothers, and then one younger brother and one younger sister. We were all into sports, all the way through—my dad was a great baseball player. I was more of a baseball player than a basketball guy, and the town that I grew up in was baseball-heavy. That's what everybody did. We were very, very good, even as Little Leaguers, all the way up to 1 high school. Our high school team, St John's High School, won many, many state championships. Summer, fall and spring. We didn't have football because we were such a small school. We didn't have enough people to play football, so we played baseball and then basketball. Baseball was a big part of my growing up, and during the summers, I remember as little kids, we'd get together and play pickup baseball games. We would do that until the weather held out, and then did that all the way through, and then got to high school and played baseball and basketball. We had a lot of success in high school baseball. I had one of the greatest coaches in high school baseball history in the country. When my high school baseball coach retired, he was the winningest high school coach in the United States. So that's how good it was, and we were very good, and so I had a great, great time playing high school baseball. Got recruited to play baseball in college, ended up going to Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is about two and a half hours from where I grew up, and another really good baseball program. I ended up playing basketball as well, even though I wasn't—when you're a midget, you know, or a pygmy, whatever you want to call it, there wasn't a lot of people chasing me to play college basketball, but they let me walk on, and I still got to play about four years of college basketball, but baseball is what paid the bills. I was on full scholarship, and then when I left there, I thought I was going to be a major league baseball player, until I didn't. But growing up, had a great childhood, great family. We worked hard on the farm, you know, and farming is hard work. My parents instilled a lot of work ethic in us, and we'd get up and work all day in the fields, and then we'd get some free time to go play around after that. But it was really fun. It was a good experience for me 2 and taught me a lot of values, a lot of things that I've used in coaching throughout the years. So I really enjoyed it. MT: Were you encouraged, when you were younger, to pursue a degree in college? RR: Yeah, although myself and my one other brother, the only ones that got college degrees. My parents pushed it; they wanted me to get an education, and we didn't have a lot growing up. I mean we were middle-class, lower middle-class probably. It helped that I got a scholarship so I could go to college and baseball scholarships. So that helped, even though I think my parents would have found a way to help me. But that helped; it was pushed to get your degree, and playing college baseball was a great way to get your degree and get school paid for. MT: So what degrees do you hold? RR: I just got a bachelor's degree, and my major was Elementary Education and Physical Education, and I use that. When I got out of college, I ended up teaching fifth grade at a small little place in eastern Colorado. Small little school. I taught fifth grade for two years, and then I got into teaching Physical Education for about three years until I left to go into college basketball. I got an opportunity, and I didn't teach anymore after that, but that was my degree. Elementary Ed and Physical Education. MT: What made you transition from teaching to the college level? RR: I knew I loved coaching college; I knew I loved coaching basketball. When I got hired at my first place, a school in Colorado, I was assistant varsity basketball coach, I was assistant baseball coach. Then the small schools, I taught all junior high basketball, football—even though I never played football—track. I did a lot of things I didn't know all that much about. But when I got into the coaching of basketball, I was a better baseball player, but I loved basketball more. I just had a passion for basketball. So I got into it, and I found out exactly how much I loved it. 3 I'll be honest with you; after teaching a few years, I didn't think that was for me. But I wanted to find an avenue to coach college basketball, because you don't have to teach. I got very fortunate; a friend of mine that I met doing a bunch of summer basketball camps for different colleges got a job at Colorado College, and I met him working these camps, and he called me. It was summer, and I was not planning on this, but he just said, "Hey, I need an assistant coach. So would you be interested in being assistant coach for me and get out of high school?" I said, “Yeah, I'd love to do it.” So he gave me the opportunity to go with him, and that was my first step into college basketball at Colorado College. Made no money, you know, I was broke. Didn't matter, I was single. I thought it was a great adventure. That's what kind of got me started was that first job. MT: Okay. How long were you at Colorado College? RR: Just one year. MT: One year? Okay. RR: Yeah. The deal was, he paid me 1200 dollars, and that was for the year. That's what he told me. He says, "Hey, I can hire you and I can pay you 1200 dollars". I say, “Well, that's not bad, a month, right?” I figured for a month. He says, "No, that's for the whole year". “Okay, well, I guess I'll have to figure it out.” I figured out how to make it and where to live and how to make a living, which was a little rough, but I was there one year. He was a great guy. Al Walker was his name. He said, "I want you to come here for a year. I want to teach you how to be a college basketball assistant, and then I'm going to help you get to a graduate assistant position at a bigger college, and that will help move you on your way," and he did. I left Colorado College after one year. Then he helped me get the job as a graduate assistant at the University 4 of Colorado in Boulder, and so that led to that. Do you want me to keep going, or do you want me to shut that down? MT: You can keep going, yeah. RR: I was there for about nine months, and then our head coach got fired, which means the whole staff gets fired. So I was only there nine months and didn't have a job, didn't know what I was going to do. Thought about going back to high school just to get a job, and the only way I could make money, I went out and worked at college basketball camps. I worked like 12 weeks in a row. I worked from Kansas, Kansas State, Colorado, Colorado State, Villanova, Syracuse. I was all over the country, but I needed to make some money, and that's the only way. They didn't pay much, but I could live week-to-week. When I got done with that, I didn't have a job. I still couldn't find a job, and so I went down to Denver University and talked to the head coach, Dick Peth, who is a great basketball coach, and I asked him if I could just volunteer, no money. “I just want to come in and work full-time and I want to help you out. I want to learn. I want to get better.” He fortunately brought me on, and I didn't get paid, but it was a great experience for me. He gave me a lot of responsibility, taught me how to do things in college basketball, helped me a lot. I did that for one year, and then I got a very lucky break. Stew Morrill became the head basketball coach at Colorado State, and I was working the Colorado State basketball camps for Boyd Grant. I worked Boyd Grant's basketball camps for a long time, and I got to know Boyd. When Stew Morrill got the job, he came in, he was still looking for an assistant or two, and Boyd Grant went to Stew Morrill and gave him a recommendation for me. Long story short, Stew hired me as a low-level assistant. Didn't make a lot of money, but a little bit. That was my biggest break. Once I got there with Stew, then I was able to stay there for seven years at 5 Colorado State with him, and I moved up from a low-level assistant to a full-time assistant during that time. We were there seven years and had a great seven years at Colorado State. Then our head coach, Stew Morrill, took another job at Utah State, so all of our system, all these systems went with it. We moved from there to Utah State, and I was there for six years with Stew at Utah State. Great six years; had a lot of success and everything went really well. After six years, a good friend of mine got the head coaching job at University of Utah, Ray Giacoletti, and he asked me to come down and be one of his main assistants. I've been with Stew for 13 years. Stew Morrill's a terrific mentor of mine, but I needed to just check out something different, so I went down to Utah for two years with Ray Giacoletti and had a really good two years with him. We went to the Sweet 16, did a lot of good things. Then the next year, after my second year, I was luckily able to get the head coaching job at Weber State, and I was here for 16. So that's the story. It’s long, it's boring, I get it, but that's where I came from. MT: So what's the difference between the different assistant positions that you've held? RR: Yeah, each staff has lower-level assistants. Some are called video coordinators. Now they're called operations and basketball directors. I was called, at the time when I started, the restricted earnings coach, which meant you could only make so much. I made $4000 for the year for my first few years at Colorado State. Then you want to go from that position to the director of basketball operations, which is more responsibility, a little bit more money. But those positions, you don't get to go out and recruit. The next step is to become a full-time assistant, which means now you can go out and recruit, you can do everything. There's no limits on your responsibilities. Everybody's goal is to, you know, I worked up the ladder and then Stew eventually 6 gave me a full—we had somebody on our staff at Colorado State that left, took another job, and he moved me up into a full-time recruiting position. When you get to that point, now you make a little bit of money and you're able to really hone your skills and recruit and scout and coach and do everything. Like I said, Stew gave me that first opportunity, and that was the break that I needed. Had he not hired me at Colorado State, I have no idea where I'd be right now, so I was very fortunate. MT: So how did you hear about Weber State's head coach position? RR: Oh, when you're in college basketball, you know everything. Everybody knows what's open at that time. It was after my second year at Utah and there was actually, in the Big Sky conference, there was like four head coaching openings. One was at Idaho State, one was at Montana State, another one was at Northern Colorado, and then Weber State was open. It's really unusual to have four head coaching jobs open in the same conference, and I figured that was my next step. If I was going to get a chance to be a head coach, it would probably be at a conference like The Big Sky, and I applied for every job. Idaho State, Montana State, Northern Colorado. I did not apply for Weber State, but I applied for those other three. I didn't even get a sniff. I mean, I didn't get an interview and nothing. Basically nothing. Northern Colorado called me back, but I wasn't a serious candidate, so it was a little discouraging. I did not apply for Weber State because that was the best job out of all those jobs that was available. The pool of candidates that were applying for the Weber State job, I just didn't know if I could compete. I didn't know if I could even get in the door. The night before, my wife kept saying, "You got to apply; you got to apply. It's right up the road. You've been in Utah.” 7 I said, “I can't get that job. What am I doing?” It was the night before the job closed and you had to apply online, which I don't know how to do that stuff, so my wife sat me down. It was about 2 hours before the deadline. She says, "We're going to apply.” I said, “Alright.” So she helped me do it on the computer and all this. We got it in, and I didn't think a thing of it. “I'm not going to get this job. There's some pretty strong candidates.” Then eventually I got a call. Jerry Graybill was the athletic director at the time, and he called me and he did say that, "Hey, we would like to interview you.” I was one of 10 interviews that they did. If this is going too long, you can shut me off. MT: Oh, no. You're good. Keep going. This is great. RR: But anyway, I was one of 10 candidates, and there were some very experienced, qualified candidates that had head coaching experience. I had none. I was just an assistant, and I was the tenth person they interviewed that day. They did them all in one day. They had a committee and everything. I thought, “Well, I'm number 10, so I guess that's probably where I'm at on the totem pole.” So, I just went in there and did my thing, but it was strange because when I started telling my philosophy and things I believed in and how I wanted to run a program, it kind of resonated with Jerry Graybill. The committee was talking about us, kind of feeling like, “This is kind of what I'm all about, how I want to do things.” We got done with the interview and I didn't think much of it, and then Jerry grabbed me and he says, "Hey, come back over to my office. I want to talk to you one-on-one afterwards.” We had a little one-on-one meeting, and we got a little more serious about talking about the job and a little bit more on philosophy and what I believed in, some of that stuff. Again, it was kind of like we had some 8 chemistry there, and the things that they were believing in was what I was believing in. Anyway, I left there and I thought, “You know what, maybe I got a little shot at this thing.” Eventually I got the call that I got the job. I was actually out recruiting, and it came down to the final two guys. The other guy that was involved in the job was a very good friend of mine, one of my best friends. We worked together at Colorado State and Utah State. Don Verlin is his name. He's still one of my best friends. I found out that they're trying to decide between me and him for the job, and I thought, “You know what, if I don't get it, at least he gets it because he's a good friend.” Anyway, I was getting on a plane to come back from recruiting. I want to say I was in Kansas or someplace, and I was actually on the plane. Stew Morrill was out recruiting, and we're coming back on the same plane, even though I didn't work for him anymore. He knew about what was going on because we were both his assistants. I said, “Well, I'm supposed to hear something.” Right before we got on the plane, I got the call that I got the job, and Stew and I were able to fly back, and that was great for me, and now I'm a nervous wreck, right? Everybody says, “Yeah, you want to go get the job,” and then when you do look out, now you got to actually prove it up. So it was great. We had a great conversation, and he was trying to help guide me and how to get started and all that stuff. I was very, very fortunate to get the job, and to this day, I've always felt like it was a blessing. They took a chance on me, they really did. They could have hired a lot of more experienced people, and they took a chance on me. It's something I never have taken lightly my whole time here. Every day I wake up, I feel like it's an honor and a privilege to be here, and I've got a big responsibility to uphold here 9 because they did take a chance on me. That's kind of what drove me a lot of times, too. MT: What was that first-year coaching here at Weber like for you? RR: Well, it's another story. I get the job and it's about April 1. I knew they had a team full of guys that were supposed to come back. I did my research, and I knew a lot of the guys, and I had to be honest with you, I wanted my first team to be a bunch of kids that I could trust, and I didn't. Some of the guys that were on the team just for us, they weren't going to work for me, so I had to make some changes. The administration told me, "You can do whatever you want with the roster: you can keep them, you can move them, you can do whatever". Well, I moved everybody except for three guys. So basically, April 1 or 2, we only had three kids in the program, and I had to go out and recruit, and me and my staff—I had hired staff by then—we had to go out and recruit ten guys. That's hard to do in April because there's not a lot of guys left over. Most guys were already recruited and taken, signed and all that kind of stuff. I remember coming home after I got rid of all those kids. I only had three kids left, and I drove home. I was still living in Draper; I hadn't moved up from coaching at the University of Utah, so we're still in the process, we got to move and all that stuff. So I drove home, and my wife said, "Well, how was the day today?" I say, “Oh it was good, but we only have three players in the program.” She says, “Well, don't you need at least five to play a game of basketball?" I said, “Yeah, we do.” I said, “So I'm going to leave for about a month, month and a half. I'm going to go find ten guys and fill our roster,” and we did that. My staff did a great job. Jeff Linder, Eric Duft, Tim Gardner was my first staff, and we just went out and I told our guys, “Now, we're not going to find the most talent. One of my top priorities for recruiting is high-character kids. We're going to find high- 10 character kids. We're going to find tough kids. We're going to find kids that want to buy into our culture. Now, we might not get the best kids, but we're going to get the right kids.” We went out, and for the most part, I thought we did that. Anyway, we finally sign everybody, and normally you bring them in in the summer to start working with them. We couldn't even bring that team together because a lot of the kids were junior college players. They needed to take extra classes to graduate. We couldn't get our team together until school started at the end of August, so I had not seen these guys play much, right? So I'm a little nervous. We finally get them on campus and I need to go see them play. I remember we couldn't get into the Dee Event Center for some reason; it was booked or whatever. So, I took the kids, I asked somebody at St. Joe's High School if we could use their gym to go play a pickup game with my team so I could look at them, and I needed to see what I'm dealing with here. I remember that first time we played, I took my assistant and I said, “We are like the bad news bearers. This may not go well.” Anyway, we went to work with them, and I tell you what, that team really bought into the culture that we wanted them to buy into. Togetherness, toughness, playing hard, playing together, taking a bullet for each other. We're going to do it together. Everything is together, together, together. We might not be the most talented, but we're going to be a very close-knit team. That team, we got better and better and better. We weren't the most talented, but we were really tough and we were really together. That team ended up winning the conference, and we ended up going to the NCAA tournament, which was—I give a lot of credit to those kids and my staff, but those kids really bought in, and they really found a way to win a bunch of games when they probably had no 11 business winning them. So that was that first team. You look back and it was a special, special team. MT: How long was that team together? Do you change basically every year or...? RR: Well, it depends. We recruited some junior college players, and they only had two years of eligibility. High school kids have four. So, we lost, I want to say, three or four kids after that year. The three kids that I brought back from that team that were on that first team were David Patten, who ended up being the MVP of the league, who was very good; Dan Henry, who was a very good player for us; and then J.P. Silveira, who ended up being a first team all-league player. The three kids we brought back from that team, I cut everybody else. One was MVP, one was allleague, and the other one was a really good player. But we lost those three, and then I lost another junior college kid or two. Then what I wanted to do was build our program of mostly freshmen. The first year we had a quick fix-it, bring in junior college kids. We just had to get what we could get because there wasn't a lot to choose from. Then we started bringing in more high school kids and then develop them and bring them into our program for four years. Sometimes you red-shirted kids, so they're in your program for five years, and that's how I wanted to build the program. After the first couple of years, we're able to do that. Then comes Damian Lillard and Kyle Ballinger and all these guys that ended up being great players for us. After the first couple of years, we solidified our program with the younger freshmen. That's kind of how we did it for the rest of the time. MT: So who was involved with recruiting Damian Lillard? Were you directly involved with that or is that one of your assistants? RR: Oh, yeah, no. I was heavily involved in that one. I mean, he's a special guy, but Jeff Linder, who was with me at the time, he started that recruiting. Actually, the way it 12 started was Damian's AAU coach, summer coach, is a really good friend of mine. Still is. Raymond Young. Quality guy. He called me. It was January of Damian's junior year, and he called me and he says, "Hey, I got a kid in Oakland High School here. He's on my youth team. He's really good and nobody's recruiting him. Are you going to need a guard down the road?" I said, “Yeah, we do.” He says, "Well, I highly recommend you recruit him". So I called Damian right away and just got to know him and everything, and then Jeff Linder kind of took the lead as an assistant coach in recruiting him and developing a relationship as well, and he did a great job with him. But then it was kind of together, you know; we both recruited him heavily. We were the first ones to offer him a Division I scholarship. Then as he went into that next summer, he was good, and finally people started to see him and see how good he was. So, a lot more people started to recruit him. A lot of people came in, but we were the first ones to offer him and we got to know him. We developed a relationship. Damian is a loyal dude, and I kept thinking, “We're going to get blown out of the water. These bigger schools are going to come take him, and it's going to be hard for us to compete.” Well, Damian kept going; when we got through the summer, he was still interested in Weber State, even though he had St. Mary's, he had Gonzaga and Arizona State, San Diego State. He had bigger schools recruiting. SMU was on him, hard. He kept saying, "Coach, I'm still interested in you guys because you guys are the first ones there.” Took a while, but we finally got him to campus on a visit and he had a great visit. His mom came with him and she liked it. Damian wanted to get out of Oakland. He did not grow up in a great area and it wasn't always safe. He wanted something safe, and he wanted a community that was going to embrace him and a 13 program that was going to embrace him. Coaching staff that he had a relationship with was really important to him. But we got him on a visit; he had a good visit. Then the following week we went out, me and my assistant, Jeff Linder— who's now, by the way, the head coach of Wyoming. He's doing a great job. We went out and did a home visit, and the home visit went well. He committed; right after the home visit we ended up getting him. But we had to work for it. We had some interesting things go on along the way, but we had to hang in there with him. Like I said, Damian was such a loyal guy and he wanted to go to a Division 1 school, number one, where he trusted his coaches and had a relationship with his coaches. Number two, he wanted to come in and play right away as a freshman. He didn't want to go to a bigger school and maybe have to wait and sit. He wanted to go where he could play right away and he wanted to win. Those were his three things and each box, I guess, check. We checked each box for him and the rest is history. Thank God he came. MT: How does it feel when he was drafted into the NBA for you? RR: I was just like proud papa, I guess, just so proud of him. People have asked me all the way, you know, throughout the years, "Did you know when you got him he was going to be the sixth pick in the draft?" I said, “No, I did not.” I knew he was going to be good, but I didn't know he's going to be that good. But Damian, just an incredible, incredible worker, selfmotivated worker, had great confidence in himself. He was bound and determined that he was going to do this and make it. I would say it was after his sophomore year here, that's when it hit me that he's got a chance to be an NBA guy—not just an NBA guy, but a really good NBA guy. Then his third year with us, he broke his foot. He only played a few games, so he missed most of the season, and that was hard for him because he'd never 14 been injured. Then once he got healthy enough to start working out, that's when he just took off. Not playing for a few months drove him crazy, and then he got into the weight room. He got stronger. He was continuing to work on his game with a broken foot, and then when he got cleared, I mean, he lived in the gym and he just went from [holds up hands] here to here. His ability level, his skill level: he improved everything, his body, everything. Then the next year was just a great year for him, and I knew he was going to just have a breakout year. We had a lot of injuries on our team that year and he carried us, averaged 24 a game, and we went to St. Mary's and played a game and that's when the NBA thing broke open, because we played there in December and they were really good. I think Damian, I want to say, had 38 or 42 on him. I mean, he just kicked them, and then after that, all of a sudden, here comes NBA scouts. The GMs are showing up for practices and everybody's coming in and coming in and then it kind of hit me like, “Oh, my gosh.” So I remember when they're coming in, and I asked one GM, I said, “Am I going to lose him? I mean, is he going to go to the NBA now?” He starts laughing at me. He says, "Of course he is, he's top ten pick!" I've been oblivious to it because all I was trying to do is win the next game. I knew he was really good, but I didn't think about, hey NBA! I was just trying to get to practice, win the next game, so I didn't even think about that stuff. Then when he told me he's gonna be a top ten pick—and this was like in January or February—I was like, “Oh, my gosh, here we go.” But anyway, when he got drafted, I was just really proud of him. He's such a self-made guy. We tried to give him some tools and guide him and everything, but that kid worked so hard to make it, and I was just so happy. The thing about him is, he's a tremendous player, and he was back then, even, when he 15 got drafted. But he's a much, much better person. Incredible character, integrity, values, terrific teammate. He would treat the managers as well as you'd treat anybody on our team. He had an old soul and a big heart, and that's never changed to this day. Extremely humble. He never thinks he's good enough, even to this day. So that's what I'm probably most proud of him [for] is the kind of person he is. He's a great player, but he's a better person than he is a player. MT: Do you try and keep in touch with past players that you've had on the team? RR: Oh yeah, yeah. That's the best part about my job is we've always had good relationships. A part of our culture, of our program, is our relationships with the players. That's always been really important. We're going to have those strong, genuine, caring relationships for them and hopefully for them for us too. That's been one of the strengths of our program for 16 years. So to this day, I constantly hear from ex-players; I'm very close to Damian, we still communicate a lot. But a lot of the guys too: the Jeremy Senglin’s, the Joel Bolomboy’s, I mean, you just go on down the line—even the guys that aren't professional players, and I've had a lot of professional players come through here, are doing great in their lives. Some are high school coaches, some are businessmen—they're great parents, they're great husbands, you know, great fathers. But I stay in touch with a lot of them. When I announced my retirement, the funnest part was hearing from all my guys. That was the best part. So to me, that's the favorite part about coaching, and those relationships will be lifelong relationships. You know, one thing my wife and I want to do now that we're retired is— because we've got a whole bunch of guys playing high-level professional basketball in Europe. Damian's in the league, but we've got a whole bunch of guys over there, and so what we want to do in the winter is we want to go to Europe, I want to travel 16 around and see all of our guys play. We're going to do that and that's going to be really exciting to just see it from the other end, you know? Just go hang out with my guys. MT: That sounds like a lot of fun. Let's see, I had a question in my head, and it just went away. What did a typical season look like for you? RR: Typical season? MT: Or I guess like, school year. RR: School year? Well, it starts in June. We'd always bring our guys out; Weber State was out of school at the end of April, so I always wanted our guys to get home, spend time with their families. A lot of kids would take maybe a month, but usually two or three weeks, then they come back and start working out. But June 1 was our first day when we got the team back together in the summer and we could start working with them. We had limited hours, but we could do player development, which is a big part of our program. We're very much into player development. So we'd spend the months of June and July working with our guys and you can do player development. Then you could also spend a little bit of time doing team things like coaching offense and defense and all that. What we would do, we'd go June and July, and then I'd let them go towards the end of July, and I never wanted to overdo it with them. Some coaches kept them for three months, and every day they're going to do something, and you wear out your guys. I always thought it was important for our guys to get time with their family. We usually go the month of June and maybe two, maybe three weeks in July, and then I'd let them go. Some would stay anyway. That was their choice, but a lot of them would go home, and then we'd reconvene when school started. Then when school starts, then you got a certain amount of hours you get to coach them and work with them. We would do that starting early, first week of September and 17 then usually practice started the end of September. That was the first official practice, even though we were doing a lot of team workouts before that. We'd practice and then usually our first game was—you'd play a couple of exhibition games that were practice games, and we usually had some smaller schools come in that we'd play just to get our feet wet and play against somebody else. Then our first official game was usually around November 10 through the 12 or 13, right in there. That would be our first game, and then we'd play a preseason schedule. We'd usually go to a big tournament; we'd been to the Bahamas a couple of times. We've been to Alaska. I like to take our teams to different places so they can experience different cultures and not only play high-level basketball, but also get these kids out and about and see other things. That's part of the college experience. So we'd always play in a big tournament. Then we'd play our preseason schedule, which usually would end right before Christmas. Then I'd always give the kids at least three days off to go home for Christmas, which I always thought was important. I want to be with my family during Christmas; I want them to be with their family. As soon as we got back, we started practicing right after—the 27, usually, of December or something like that. Then we start conference play that first weekend of January. Conference play goes January, February, and then the Big Sky Tournament is in March, so you have two full months of conference play and then you go play the conference tournament. Then if you're good enough and you make post-season play, then you got another week or two after that, and then you start the season over again. That's kind of what it looks like. MT: I looked it up, and I believe it was nine of the 16 seasons you were here you ended up in postseason tournaments? 18 RR: Yeah, we did. We could have had a couple more years, too, to play in some of those other tournaments, but we declined to do them because we had some injuries going on. We could have probably gone two or three more times, the CITs and the CBI tournaments type, stuff like that. I was very fortunate; I mean, to have that many postseasons is fun, but I've had really good players, have had really good assistant coaches, and believe me, they've made me look a lot better than what I am. Thank God, and God bless them. MT: Was there a favorite post-season tournament that you...? RR: Yeah, we went to the NCAA tournament three times. That's the granddaddy of them all if you can get to the NCAA; that's what everybody wants to do. We were fortunate. We got to play in three of them. We've missed out on probably two or three more just by this much [pinches fingers together]. You got to win the conference tournament, and you come up short a couple of times. My first year that we won the league, we played UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The second time we went, we ended up playing Arizona. The third time we went, we played Xavier, and we played really well against Arizona and Xavier, and we had a chance. We scared the heck out of them. But those are special tournaments, and those are special for the kids. It's such a big deal and they take care of you and it's such a big stage to play on for these kids. Those were the fun ones. We played in a few NITs too, which is the next tournament down from the NCAA. Those are really high-quality tournaments. You're playing against the best teams in the country, and those are always fun. MT: Did a lot of the players have aspirations to continue a career in basketball, either as a player or getting into coaching, or were some of them, it was a hobby they enjoyed and were using it as a way to pay for school? 19 RR: Yeah, now I think most kids have that dream of playing professional basketball. Almost every kid, you know—I wouldn't say all of them, but, three-quarters of the kids that we've had come through here in 16 years all had that dream. “I want to be a pro. I want to try to play professionally,” and I've always embraced that. I want them to want that. I want them to, “Hey, I want to play at the highest level I can play when I leave here,” whether it's NBA, or you can go over to Europe and play at a very, very high level and make a great living with a lot of money over there. So I would say most of our kids wanted to do that. I've had a few that knew that they probably weren't good enough, and that's not as big a deal. A lot of them have gone into coaching: high school coaching, and a couple have gone into college coaching, too. So yeah, we've had a lot of guys that have done really well playing professionally. I think a lot of them want to do that and at least give it their best shot to try to make it. Some fall short, and some get a chance. Like I said, I wish I had a number, but the number of kids that are playing right now over there at a very high level—we've had two kids drafted, you know. Damian obviously got drafted to the NBA, and Joel Bolomboy got drafted in the NBA. But I've had three or four other kids that are very close to being in that lane. But yeah, I think most kids have that aspiration, and that's what I wanted. I wanted kids to be here that want that, that are hungry for that, that are willing to work for that, you know. If they make it, they make it. We just try to put them on the right path to give them the best opportunity. MT: What are some resistances or battles you've faced as you've progressed through your career? RR: As far as trying to get into college coaching, I don't have a great pedigree to be a Division I head basketball coach. I'm just a little farm boy from Iowa. Most of the Division I coaches and even assistant coaches and head coaches, a lot of them 20 have played Division I basketball. They were high-level players, and then they just transfer into coaching, right? Or they just move into that arena, and they've already got connections because they played at that level; they know people at that level. I never had that, so I had to start at the high school level, small college, you know; make no money for so long, go broke just trying to move my way up because I didn't have that pedigree. I wasn't a great player and nobody knew who I was. So that was the hardest thing. I knew it was going to be a long path to try to get to where I wanted to go. Like I said, it's the thing that got me there the quickest was Stew Morrill hiring me at Colorado State. I don't look like a basketball coach; I'll be honest with you. You know, a lot of it is image, right? I'm too small and too short. I'm not very good looking; I'm not very smart. I got a lot of detriments, you know, so my own thought process was, “I have to outwork everybody.” If I'm going to make it, I got to try to do it the right way: recruit with character, honesty, and integrity, and try to uphold some kind of values that I believed in, but then just outwork people. That was my path, and then hope that somebody sees how you're doing it and the work that you're putting into it, and that may be attractive to somebody that might want to hire you. That's what I had to do, and I was obsessed. When I was assistant coach all the way through at the college level, I was working almost 24/7, and in fact, when my wife and I got married, we were at Colorado State. I'd just gone on to Colorado State, and I'm surprised she stayed with me because all I did was work. I needed to be in the office. “I need to outwork people. I need to show that I'm worthy.” I had to prove that I'm worthy of this position, and then I guess I just grinded it out. Then I got enough breaks along the way that helped me to get to this point, so it was a lot of hard work. 21 MT: Did you have any resistance or battles to the way you coached here at Weber or the way you ran the program? RR: Not that I think of. You mean from fans, or? MT: Administration, or just— RR: Oh, no; gosh, no. The administration here, it's one of the reasons I was here for this long. The administration here, when I got to Weber State, it was a terrific fit for who I was. I'm just a blue-collar farm boy, and I think Weber State and the city of Ogden is a blue-collar community. I think the university is a blue-collar university where people actually care about each other and people are willing to help you. It's genuine and it's real, and that's what I'm all about. There's a lot of universities around the country that aren't like that. Everybody's looking out for their own skin, and I'm taking care of myself. It's kind of a cold, egotistical, entitled atmosphere. When I got here, it just clicked. That came from the administration, from the president on down: the vice president, the athletic directors. That's what the whole general feeling was. “We are in this together and we're here to help you.” Nobody has egos, nobody thinks they're better than anybody. We're all here to help each other. The coaches here, all the head coaches, everybody's close. It's like a family atmosphere. I'm here to help Jay Hill, and Jay Hill's here to help me. Everybody: Mary Kay and me, all the coaches, Scotty Erling, everybody; we're all here to help each other. I had opportunities to leave here and go to bigger jobs and higherpaying jobs, and I couldn't pull myself away because I just loved it here so much because of that culture. My family loved it, too. It just fits. The community of Ogden's the same way. It's just a bunch of hardworking, really good people that care for each other, and that's who I am. I never wanted to leave here. I'd never take a job for money. I'm not going to do that. Every time a job came up that we could have left and taken something else, I kept asking my wife. 22 She says, "Well, we're happy. Why would we mess with happiness?" A lot of that has to do with the administration, and the administration has been absolutely fantastic to me and my family the whole time I've been here. MT: You mentioned being pretty close with the other coaches, specifically the women's basketball coach and team. What was that relationship like? RR: It's great! MT: Because you had to share the Dee Event Center and... RR: Yeah, yeah, we just shared it. Velaida is terrific, you know, and Bethann Ord was here before her, and CT, Carla Taylor, was here before her, and their offices are right by my office. We're all in this together. [Recording pauses.] [Recording begins again.] RR: We would run out; we'd have ideas for each other, and if I needed something, I'd go to her and Velaida and all the coaches, and if they needed some advice, they'd come for me. We just worked together. It wasn't ‘us’ against ‘you’. It was, “Hey, we're working together here, and we share the Dee,” which is awesome, and it was great. We just got to know each other really well because we're all trying to accomplish the same things. I do know other places where the coaches don't get along, you know: “Hey, this is my program,” or, “I'm better than you,” and “I'm protective of my deal.” That's all counterproductive. That's so not who I am or who I want to be, and so I've loved my relationship with all the women's coaches. Velaida is terrific right now, and she's doing a great job building her program. Like I said, I've always been all about relationships with all the coaches, you know. Mary Kay Amicone is in our office too. Softball coach who was just legendary, what she's doing around here, and so I've got a great relationship with her because we're right there now. Our office is in the Dee Event Center, and then 23 you got a lot of the other sports over in the football stadium, or the new football complex now. We had to work at getting to know those guys better, because every day you come into the building, and we got Mary Kay there and Velaida's there and our staff was there and their staffs were there, so we got to know each other really, really well, but it was a little bit harder. We made sure that we got to know each other and took care of each other and supported each other, go to each other's games. If Jay gets a big win, texting him right away: “Man, that was awesome,” and that's what they do; everybody does that to everybody. Jeremiah Larsen, I mean, he's killing it in volleyball right now, the job he's doing. I like to pick their brains. They're really good coaches. I need to pick their brains, and I would do that at times. I'm big into culture; that's my whole thing. So I would talk to them about their culture and get ideas, what they do. Sometimes they'd ask me whatever. But again, we were just all in it together, and everybody's ready, always willing to help each other out. That's what I've loved about it. MT: How has Weber State changed during your time here? RR: The university, or the athletics, or just in general? MT: In general, any of it? RR: You know, what I've seen from the university is the growth. Every year you see new buildings going up and they're constantly moving forward. They're not standing still. I love the progression of forward thinking. We need to keep moving and growing and adding new things. I've seen so much new growth in 16 years, and it's really exciting because you just want to see everything keep growing and keep moving. Also, the enrollment just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Then the reputation: Weber State has a tremendous academic reputation around the state and within the western United States for being just a quality teaching university, where when you go to Weber State, you're going to be taught by the professors that 24 were hired to teach the class. If you go to these bigger universities around—not only Utah, but everywhere else—the instructors are hired to do research and who's teaching the classes are their graduate teacher assistants. The thing I've always loved about this place is that the professors that are hired here are in the classroom, and they want to keep small class sizes. It's really important to Weber State that when you get into the study that you're majoring in, whatever classes you're majoring in, I think they want to keep it 20 to one, 22 to one. I just noticed our players that have gone through the academics here at Weber State have just really benefited from those instructors that are in there teaching them, the real ones, and the class sizes are small, so they develop a relationship with those kids. I've always been really impressed with that and I've loved that, but I've seen a lot of growth throughout the years. It's been really exciting to see. They're always moving forward. They're never just saying, "Ah, we're good enough". No, we gotta keep going. So, there's a new building coming up here, a new construction going on here. “We're going to change this. We're going to change that.” I love the old forward thinking of the administration. I have seen a lot of changes with that. MT: Okay. You've kind of touched on it, but what are some of your favorite memories of Weber State, events or different things? RR: Yeah, I mean, obviously being the coach, you think about the cool wins, the big wins that you've had; every win that we've had to go to the NCAA tournament is really special. All the championships that we're able to win when you win those championships and you get to celebrate with your team. That, to me, is what it's all about right there. Those are some of the best memories that I've had here. We've been fortunate and we got to win a lot of games and some championships and all that, so we got to experience all those fun things and the success and everything. 25 But to me, the fun thing about it was just to see every time we won one of those big ones, I just want to stay back and just watch my guys. Just the joy and happiness and the celebrations. That's what it's all about. We're in it for them. We've always been a player-based program. It's about the players. Our program has never been about the coaches or myself or anything like that. It's always been about the players. They come first, no matter what. I'm just one of the guys that are in the program, and so we've always tried to take care of them really, really well and push them forward. When they have that success it's so cool to see them; the joy is just unbelievable. We've had a few of those wins that have been there. They'll always be with you ‘til they die, you know? It's been awesome. MT: Any memories from the fans that stand out? RR: Yeah, I think when we've won championships at home and see everybody come on to the court and all that kind of stuff and celebrate with our players is always really cool. Weber State's got the best fans in the Big Sky Conference and it's not even close. I mean, we have tremendous fans. They're very loyal and they're just passionate. Weber State's had a great history of basketball throughout the years, not just my tenure, but before I got here. They've always had great attendance, and the people have always been very loyal to men's basketball and showed up for them. You know, there’s been times; we've had a couple of tough years in my 16 years with injuries and crazy stuff happening. The thing that always stands out to me is they keep showing up and they keep coming. Thick or thin, they were always there. I love that about them, the loyalty that they have to the program. I think one thing I hope the fans appreciate is the kind of kids we brought into the program. There's a lot of programs out there that bring in a bunch of knuckleheads and selfish guys and crazy dudes, and I was never going to go there. When Anne Millner and Jerry Graybill hired me, Ann told me this, which matched up 26 to exactly what I wanted. She says, “Number one, I want to graduate kids. They're going to graduate. I don't want you to break the rules, and I want to win.” That's exactly the way I wanted to run a program, with high character, high integrity, really good kids, and we weren't going to break the rules; that's just not me. I'm not going to do that, and that's hard to do in college basketball this day and age, because there's a lot of cheating going on. I wanted to win, and I wanted to have it all. You can still graduate kids. You can do it the right way with good people, graduate them, stay within the rules, and you can still win. That was what I wanted to do, and so I hope the fans appreciated the kind of high-character kids we brought in here. Kids that they can be proud of. Kids who were going to give a great effort. They're going to play hard. They're going to play together. They're going to play for each other. When they see them in the community, they're going to be good kids that they can go up and talk to, and the kids are going to want to talk to and be a part of them and maybe have a relationship. That's what I hope, and I do think our fans, for the most part, appreciate having those kinds of blue-collar, hard-working, tough kids in our program. That's what I was about, and that's what I tried to bring in here, and I hope they enjoyed that. MT: How did COVID affect your job and basketball? RR: I’ll be honest. That was the hardest year that I've ever had in coaching, and I think all coaches will say that it was really, really difficult. I tell you what, our administration did a wonderful job of maneuvering through this pandemic, because it was not easy, and it was 24/7 with the things that they had to do and all the different testing and all the procedures you had to follow and everything. The guidelines were crazy. Our trainer, Joel Bass, who's the best trainer I've ever been around, did an incredible job of helping our players through it, but it was difficult. It was difficult when you go out and you practice. 27 The first thing that was hard about it was our kids. Our players weren't allowed to be college students. They got a year of college stripped away from them because college is not just about playing basketball or going to class. It's about social interaction with other students and doing things on campus. That's what college is, as much as playing basketball and going to class, and they weren't allowed to do that. We put them in an apartment and we tried to keep them bottled up over there as much as we can. “Stay away from everybody. You can't be around anybody.” You go from there, you go to practice, you go back to your apartment, and that was their life. Then when we got to travel—which was a few times when they didn't get canceled—stay away from everybody. No restaurants, no nothing, and so they weren't allowed to be normal college students, and that was hard. Our kids did a wonderful job with it, but the thing that scared me the most was the mental health part of it. I was really concerned about our kids’ mental health and it kept me up night after night after night. I told our staff, I said, “We have got to have—” and we had a great relationship with that team, with all the players, but we have to have our antennas up. If somebody walks into practice and you see a different look or you see somebody acting a little bit out-of-the-ordinary, we need to address it. We need to be on top of it. We need to watch him. Because that scared me, because there was a lot of mental health stuff going on at that time and I was just afraid for the kids. I wanted to keep them healthy and having fun. That year I met with more players. I meet with my players a lot, and we don't even talk about basketball, we just talk about life in general. “How are you doing? How's your family doing?” all that kind of stuff. I met with them probably three times as much, maybe four times as much as I did, because I just want to get a feel of each kid and how they're doing. My goal that year was I was going to talk to and have a good conversation with each kid on our team every day. 28 I knew that I could look them in the eye and say, “We're good. Is there anything, Bobby? If there's something that you need help with, let me know.” We did have some of that, that we had some kids that were struggling a little bit at times, but that was the hardest part about it. Looking back, I feel bad for them because they got one year of college taken away from them basically, and we ended up having a really good season. We're 17-and-5, and we had a really good conference year. That team, they were diligent and staying with the protocols, doing what we're supposed to do. We had very few cases. The other thing scaring me is kids actually getting sick. Obviously, that scared the death out of me, so that took a lot of energy, and it zapped a lot of juice out of me and my staff because we're so into the kids. But it was really, really difficult, and I never want to do that again. Well, I don't have to worry about it now, I guess, but that was really a hard, hard season. But I was really proud of the guys on how well they handled that, and they handled it with class, toughness, dignity, and character. MT: Did you skate by with few to no cases? RR: We had very few. We had some in the summer before the season. I think we had, don't quote me, but maybe five in the summer. Nobody really got sick. It was just like symptoms or whatever. I want to say after September 1st, I want to say we had one case. We never had to cancel a game because of our kids getting COVID. We've had a lot of cancellations because the other teams ended up with COVID. That was a hard year because some teams were getting home games canceled; some were getting away games canceled. We got home games canceled because the other team got COVID and they couldn't come here and play us. But we played every one of our away games, so the balance of home-to-road games that we were playing was not equal, and our kids still won a bunch of games. I was proud of them 29 for that. We had to go on the road and win a whole bunch of games, and they did a great job with that, but I think we had won overall. Again, our trainers—our doctors—did a great job of keeping our kids safe and doing it the right way. We got through it actually pretty well. MT: That was the 2020-2021 season? RR: It was the last year or the year before. That would have been 2021. Is that right? I don't know. Is it two years ago? What was last year? ’21-‘22? MT: I'm trying to think. RR: Yeah, two years ago was 2021, and then this last year was ‘21-‘22. We still had a little COVID issues this year. Not nearly as much, but I think we had one, two or three games canceled because of that. MT: But nowhere near as bad? RR: No, nothing like it was. That's for sure. MT: Just a couple questions left. How have you become a mentor to others in your field? RR: I don't know. I don't look at myself as a mentor. I just do my thing. If anybody ever asks and they need something, they have questions about how we run our program. We've had quite a few people that coaches have wanted to pick our brains about, that kind of thing. I've always wanted to be there to give ideas. I don't think I've ever had all the answers by any means. I had to work really hard at trying to be a good coach. Some was good, some was bad. But I don't know if I—maybe some of my younger assistant coaches when they were coming up. I'm not sure ‘mentor’ is the word, but just try to guide them along the way. I just tried to run the program the way I felt I wanted to run the program, or what I felt was best with character, integrity, toughness, togetherness, all those things. I have mentors. I don't know if anybody would look at me and say I'm a mentor, but if there is, if anybody ever needed something, one of our players or 30 coaches, I'd give my left arm to help them. I do whatever I can to help them. So, I hope that my assistant coaches have taken some things away from how I did things that they can use and help them, and I've got a couple of guys that work for me that are now head coaches— three guys now that are head coaches were my assistant coaches. They're going to do it their own way, which they need to do. But maybe if they can take a couple of things that I did and help them be successful in their program, I hope they will do that. They're all really good coaches, so they probably don't need a lot from me, that's for dang sure. I don't know for sure. MT: The last question is just, what advice would you give to either students or the staff starting in your field? RR: That want to be college basketball coaches? MT: Yeah. RR: My whole thing—and all I can give you is my experience. If you want to get into this field, just number one, just work as hard as you can. Do it the right way, do it with character, do it with integrity, do it with honesty. There's so much of that that's lost in college basketball in this day and age. There's a lot of other stuff going on. Always hold true to your values. Never let anything take you away from what you believe in, and just work really hard; be a good person. I would always say this: I always saw a lot of assistant coaches when I was coming up through the ranks that were on other staffs, other schools. All they talked about was getting the next job. I got to get the next job. I got to get a better job. I got to do this. I would say, work really hard where you're at. Be very, very loyal to whoever you're working for. It's got to be genuine; it's got to be real. Be who you are, coach who you are. Don't try to emulate somebody else: “I want to be like Mike Krzyzewski or Bobby Knight,” or whatever. Be who you are, so you can’t get lost in who you are by trying to think, “This guy's really good, so I'm going to be just like 31 him.” You can't be like him. You're not him. Be who you are and then do it the right way, but do a great job where you're at. Just be really good where you're at, and don't constantly look down the road. If you just concentrate on where you're at and do a great job, somebody's going to find you. That's what I tried to do. I was 16 years as a Division I assistant. I didn't know if I was going to get to be a head coach or not, but I was okay. I wanted to be a head coach, but if I didn't, I wanted to do a really good job working for the head coaches that I was working for; I wanted them to know I was giving them my best. I always had their back. I was always going to be loyal to them no matter what, and it worked out for me. I got a couple breaks and I was able to get to be a head coach, but had I not been able to be a head coach, that piece would have been missing throughout my career, but I would have been okay because I was just trying to do a good job where I was at. Just be true to who you are and don't lose those values or your character or your integrity. Be loyal, be honest; do it the right way. Try to surround yourself with people that believe the same things you believe in. I've had a lot of coaching friends of mine that are really good dudes, then they go to work for another university where the head coaches might do things illegal. Do you have to do that? Just be with people that share your values and just give it your best every day. That's it. MT: Sounds good. Well, thank you so much. This has been fascinating to hear. RR: Yeah. Hope I didn't bore you guys too much. MT: Oh, no. RR: That's an hour and 15 minutes you can't get back of your life, so I'm sorry I took that away from you. MT: No, it's been wonderful. Thank you again. RR: Absolutely. 32