Modest mentor gets his due

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This article was published 06/05/2021 (1794 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After more than 45 years and counting giving back to the game of basketball, Randy Kusano is getting the recognition he deserves — even if he isn’t all that comfortable receiving it.

A modest, yet fiercely dedicated coach who is considered to be among the most respected and accomplished ever to compete in the province’s high school circuit, Kusano makes up a key part of an impressive Class of 2021 to be inducted into the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame this fall. He’s one of four builders, along with two players and two teams to enter the Hall this year, forever cementing his name in local history along with the many other greats who have come to define basketball in this province.

“I feel very honoured, very special, very humbled. I feel very fortunate,” Kusano said in a phone interview with the Free Press. “If you knew all the people that have helped me along you’d be blown away, you’d think I was blessed by the basketball Gods or something. It seems like every good coach, every good person in Manitoba helped me along the way.”

It doesn’t take long to notice Kusano, though certainly appreciative of the recognition, feels a lot more comfortable dribbling around his own successes and instead passing the praise to others. Perhaps that’s simply part of being a coach, something he started after his playing career and still does today, nearly five decades after hanging up his high tops and trading them in for a clipboard and whistle.

Though not blessed with towering height, coming in just a few inches over five feet, Kusano, now 69 years old, carved out a respectable and decorated playing career by using his inquisitive mind to outsmart the opponent. Growing up in the Glenlawn area, in St. Vital, he was first introduced to the game while attending Norberry Junior High, where he was encouraged by fellow Hall-of-Fame coach Dennis Alvestad, as well as Ron Koskie, both of whom got him to reconsider his joy for hockey and other sports and give basketball a serious go.

From there, Kusano moved onto Glenlawn Collegiate, where he continued his development under the tutelage of Dennis Wilson, who was inducted into the same hall of fame in 2019. He’d wrap up his career with the University of Manitoba, winning the Canadian Junior Men’s championship three straight years, before being a member of the 1976 U of M Bisons — the first team in the province to win a national basketball title.

“I call these men my lifesavers. All three of them helped me along the way and they basically changed my life,” Kusano, who is of Japanese descent, said. “Growing up in predominantly white surroundings, it was a little bit different back then and these guys didn’t see any of that. They just saw a kid who was enthusiastic and could of maybe gone off the rails a bit but they kept me on the straight and narrow.”

Those relationships Kusano was able to cultivate as an adolescent would help inspire his future career and continued dedication to the sport as an adult. He coached for a few years while earning his education degree, before being hired as a gym teacher at Oak Park High School shortly after the school was built in 1976. It wouldn’t be long before he applied to be a basketball coach, teaching mainly boys – he had a short stint with the girls, too – before finally retiring in June, 2010, an impressive 34 years later.

To truly understand the impact Kusano has had on the athletes he’s coached, and the many more students he’s taught, Murray Brown says you’d have to witness the steady stream of people he’s seen over the years return to Oak Park to personally thank him for his guidance. Brown understands that appreciation all too well; he was taught and coached by Kusano as a teen, and it was his genuine care and leadership that inspired him to later become a teacher at Oak Park, where he would spend 30 years working nearby his mentor as the varsity girl’s head coach.

“Of all things that stand out after all these years it’s a practice on a Saturday morning,” Brown recalls in a phone interview. “He praised me for something in practice and for doing it well, even though when I played for him at Oak Park I was not a good player. But it still sticks out in my mind the way it made me feel, even 45 years later, and I know of other people who have had those special moments, too.”

One doesn’t stay in the game, and at the same place, that long without being adept and able to adjust to their surroundings. While Kusano admits he was a demanding coach early in his career, and still expects the best of his athletes today, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who had a negative word to say about him.

Such is the legacy of a man who is defined by his supporters as someone who cared just as much about the star player as he did the one who struggled to get into the game. While basketball was the thing that connected him to so many young souls, it was his genuine interest and care in seeing them succeed on and off the court that has opened a seemingly endless amount of opportunities to remain in the game.

Holly Kitchen points to how Kusano left Oak Park to better explain the kind of man he is, ending his long career on top with the final of his three AAAA provincial titles. Kitchen, who helps coach the varsity girls with Brown at Oak Park and has long admired Kusano for his continued mentorship of athletes and coaches in Manitoba, says he had built a powerhouse team and could have stuck around another year to bask in back-to-back glory.

Instead, he handed it off to Jon Lundgren, someone Kusano greatly admired for his energy and commitment to the game, because he wanted to make sure he was in good hands. The Raiders, now playing under Lundgren, repeated as provincial champs.

“He makes me want to be a better coach, because when I see people around him and the things he’s been able to accomplish, the accolades are great but it’s having those long relationships with your coaches, with your players and just sharing that same passion that truly leaves a mark,” Kitchen said. “There’s no one more deserving for this than Randy.”

Kirby Schepp has risen to be among the most respected basketball minds in Manitoba and across the country. But before he became the Bisons men’s basketball head coach, and prior to taking on a significant role with the Canadian Men’s National team program, he was coaching high school at the now-defunct Silver Heights Collegiate, the cross-river rivals of Oak Park.

Schepp not only admired Kusano as a person and opposing coach, he also knew he could learn a lot from having him on his side. So when Kusano decided to leave the Raiders, Schepp, who had left to coach the Bisons a few years earlier, made moves to add him to his staff. Kusano stayed on as assistant coach for six years. In total, he’s put in 25 years as an assistant with the men’s and women’s programs at the U of M, often out of the spotlight.

To Schepp, the way Kusano is highly regarded in the basketball community is a stark reminder for how one is remembered not necessarily by what they achieved, but how they treated people along the way.

“There are generations of players who played for him and who wanted their kids to play for him, but there’s also a generation of coaches who he mentored and I’m definitely one of them,” Schepp said. “You can’t write the story of basketball, certainly in our province, without Coach Kusano’s name coming up and I don’t think you can write the story of sport, and certainly not high school sports, without Coach K.”

Kusano doesn’t know when he’ll eventually ride off into the sunset, finally stepping away from the game he’s undoubtedly given much more than he’s taken. And that’s all right, because he continues to enjoy his role as a high performance coach for Basketball Manitoba, working with young girls in the hopes of having them reach their full potential. Ditto for the many young coaches he also works with — it’s just what he loves doing, beyond a father and grandfather.

“The best moments are the thank-yous that you get from your players, whether you win or lose. It’s thank you for the time you put in and the time shared together,” Kusano says. “It’s about the friendships you develop. That’s what’s really important to me.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

twitter: @jeffkhamilton