Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

If you’re not familiar with Bishop Carroll girls coach Don Racine, he’s a big guy from the East Coast. He’s very gruff, can be a little scary at times and intimidating most of the time. Now, he’s one of my favorite people because there’s nothing better than when you can make the cranky dude smile.

I especially liked him when I heard the following story that my boss, Kirk Seminoff, likes to tell.

Back during the 1994-95 season, Kirk wrote a game box on a Carroll game, a blowout, of course. It was a game that Carroll could easily have scored more than 100 points, but didn’t. See, a Racine-coached team has never scored more than 100 points. Now if you think about how much Carroll has dominated girls basketball, especially in the early years, and how bad other teams have been, that’s truly amazing and a tribute to Racine.

Anyway, in the game box there was a spot that said “What it means.” Kirk wrote “Don Racine is a nice guy.”

Well, that turned into a T-shirt — with Racine’s face and the line “What it means: Don Racine is a nice guy — made by Carroll folks and that found its way to Kirk and my former co-worker, Duane Frazier. Kirk still has his shirt. Not sure if Duane does, but he said he told his wife she couldn’t wear the shirt to bed anymore. Seems that waking up to Racine’s face scarred him — and scared him.
I bring this up because Carroll beat West 73-10 tonight. Another night when Racine could have let his players go crazy and completely embarrass West. But that’s not his style. You gotta love that about him.

By the way, Carroll once lost a game 9-4 to Heights. That was in 1981-82. How do I know? Kirk just looked it up. He’s the man.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 11:53 p.m. and is filed under Basketball, Coaches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.