Catching Up With ... Gymnast Tammy Sutton Carney (June 20)
                                       Legendary basketball coach Les Habegger (June 27)
 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The opportunity was squarely in front of Ritchie McKay – but it was more than just a chance to start his career as a head coach.
 
It was a chance to start a program at the same time.
 
 "We got to build it from scratch," Seattle Pacific alum McKay of reviving men's basketball at Portland State University in 1996 after the Vikings had been off the court for 15 years. "We got to choose the uniforms, got to recruit every player, and there was no culture to change or implode.

 

"I was only there for three years and two seasons of competing. But it was a catalyst in shaping what I wanted to do as a head coach, and who I would hire, and how I would run a program."
 
The former Falcons star and 1987 graduate with a self-designed degree in athletic administration got that inaugural 1996-97 team into the win column nine times – nine more than many people expected for a first-year Division I squad. The following year, the Vikings had a 15-12 winning record.
 
Today, McKay has just finished his fifth year as associate head coach on Tony Bennett's staff at the University of Virginia. Last season, the Cavaliers went 30-7, won the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season and tournament titles, and advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16.
 
"It was a neat run," said McKay, now 49. "To win the regular-season title is one thing. But to follow up with the ACC Tournament championship in Greensboro, it was very exciting and thrilling. We had a group of young people who weren't overly recruited. But they really bought into the team."
 
That kind of basketball – and the chance to make a positive impact on those who play it – is the kind of opportunity that keeps Ritchie McKay coming back to the gym.
 
SOUTHWEST TO NORTHWEST
By any measure, Mesa, Ariz., is a long way from Seattle:1,469 miles on the odometer, and anywhere from 20 to 70 degrees warmer on the thermometer, depending on the time of year.
 

But in 1984, McKay, a 19-year-old, 5-foot-11 point guard coming off his freshman year at Mesa Junior College, made the trip at the behest of first-year Seattle Pacific head coach Claude Terry.
 
"Besides being a good basketball player, I appreciated his work ethic and just his team attitude," Terry said by phone from Phoenix, where he now lives. "And of course, he was quick. After I got to know him and see the character he had and his outlook on life, he was just one of those young men who you knew was going to be very successful."
 
McKay made himself right at home on the shores of the Ship Canal.
 
"I just really connected with Coach Terry," he said. "I was there in the fall and said if I liked it, I would come to school there. I fell in love with Seattle, the weather and the people."
 
That 1984-85 season was a tough one, as the Falcons were just 9-19. McKay started 26 of the 28 games, averaged 6.3 points, and dished a team-leading 155 assists.
 
The following year, SPU went 15-16. McKay started 30 games, raised his scoring average to 11.2 and again set the assists pace with 162. He started all 28 games as a senior in 1986-87, and led the way in scoring (14.0), assists (139) and steals (67) as the Falcons finished 12-16.
 
The 67 swipes included 10 against Pacific Lutheran. Both marks, along with his career total of 153, were school records at the time. The single-game standard still stands, and is the source of one of McKay's favorite Seattle Pacific stories.
                                                        
"I (was credited for) 10 steals that one night, and everyone asked if I was dating the scorekeeper," McKay recalled with a laugh. "I wasn't."
                                                                               
While McKay never got a taste of postseason play while in maroon, he ultimately moved on with a couple of far more significant things: the thought of coaching, and a deeper faith.
 
"To be part of a Christian campus like that was really one of the neatest experiences I had," McKay said. "There were so many people there who really modeled what a servant leader was like, you couldn't help but to grow. I loved the Falcons – I wouldn't have traded it for anything."
 
CUT OUT FOR COACHING
McKay continued to play pro-am ball, and was invited to a Seattle SuperSonics mini-camp. But during the summer months before that camp, he broke his foot. It was then that Falcons coach Terry encouraged him to apply for a graduate assistant opening on Andy Russo's staff across town at Washington.
 
"It's that way with point guards. They have to have the knowledge of how to get the team involved," Terry said of nudging McKay toward coaching. "He was always one of those guys who had that kind of expertise on the floor. Plus, he had the leadership ability and was a good communicator."
 

McKay applied, got the job, and enrolled in grad school.
 
"I had a taste of what coaching is like, and I kind of liked it," he said. "But I still didn't have the playing bug out."
 
He went to play in New Zealand, "but I could kind of sense a draw to coaching."
 
That draw led him to Charlotte, N.C., where he became the assistant to Dale Layer as they started a program from the ground up – something McKay would do again a few years later at Portland State.
 
"That was an experience," McKay said. "Dale was a phenomenal role model and gave me a picture of what a balanced life looked like.
 
"Once I had that experience, I was hooked."
 
BACK TO SPU, THEN AROUND THE COUNTRY
When Ken Bone moved up to the head coaching spot at Seattle Pacific prior to the 1990-91 season, he brought McKay aboard as his lead assistant. The Falcons went 17-10, and tied with Alaska Anchorage for first place in the Great Northwest Conference.
 
McKay then went on to assistant jobs at Bradley and again at Washington. After reviving the Portland State program, he began a transcontinental coaching trek. His 1999 Colorado State team made the quarterfinals of the National Invitation Tournament; his 2005 New Mexico squad won 26 games and reached the NCAAs, and his 2009 Liberty team won a school-record 23 games and reached the quarterfinals of the inaugural College Basketball Invitational. He also coached at Oregon State for two seasons.
 
When Tony Bennett left Washington State after three highly successful years  to take the head job at Virginia, his first order of business was to hire McKay as associate head coach.

 

The two had known each other for a number of years. McKay once asked Tony's father, former Wisconsin and WSU coach Dick Bennett, for 15 minutes just to talk about coaching. The elder Bennett gave him two hours. While at Colorado State, McKay tried to hire Tony Bennett as an assistant. That didn't work out, but the two struck up a friendship that has continued ever since.
 
"I really admire the person that he is," McKay said. "It was a great opportunity to come alongside and help build a great program. Having been a head coach, he values my input that way. Tony is very well known for his defensive system. I slant toward the offensive end. Having been with him, it has opened my eyes to just how proficient you can be as a group if you defend the right way."
 
McKay still enjoys wins and still hurts after losses. But, coming up on his 24^th anniversary with wife Julie and father of three children (daughter Ellie in college at Liberty, sons Luke and Gabriel in high school), coaching is just one aspect of his life.
 
"My identity is no longer on the outcome of the scoreboard," he said. "A great day is having an impact or being able to influence a player's or staff member's life. You can do that a lot of times by your actions.
 
"To have a genuine investment in them gives you a fulfillment of purpose."
 
It's the kind of opportunity that Ritchie McKay still loves having squarely in front of him.