GROWING UP, March was always a special time of year for Victor Raso. More often than not, it meant a trip to Halifax to watch his dad, Joe, coach the McMaster Marauders at the National Championships. “I have amazing memories from those days in Halifax,” he says. “Just being around the team, team meals and sitting courtside at the games.”
This Friday, Victor will fulfill a childhood dream, and play in the CIS Final 8 for the first time. But it won’t be as he always envisioned—wearing a McMaster Marauder jersey with his father coaching on the sideline. There will be another logo on his jersey, and Joe Raso will be a spectator.
Nearly four years ago, that dream seemed close to fruition. Raso had just completed his rookie season with McMaster, but it was then he found out his dad had been let go as head coach of the Marauders. A coach getting fired hardly qualifies as surprising news in modern sports—pro or amateur—but Coach Raso had spent close to two decades at the Hamilton University. “I got the corporate hand shake,” he said at the time. “Eighteen minutes for 18 years. I was stunned.”
Raso was let go despite McMaster qualifying for the national finals 12 times and reaching the final game four times. The Marauders were coming off a third-place finish in the OUA West with a 14-8 record, leaving Raso with a career league record of 193-88 (.687 win percentage). McMaster Athletic Director Jeff Giles, who declined to comment for this story, told local media it was based on wanting “to take (the) program to the next level,” and that “the past couple of years haven’t been (Raso’s) best.”
Raso’s son stayed with McMaster for two more years, leading the team in minutes played and assists one season, points and rebounds the next. He was a captain, a team MVP, and an all-star. But just before last season got underway, he abruptly quit, telling the Hamilton Spectator’s Scott Radley the wounds from his dad’s situation still hadn’t healed. “To some people, it may not seem like a lot,” the six-foot-three guard said, “but to me, it was my life.”
After sitting out one year for eligibility purposes, Raso chose to play at Carleton, winners of nine of the last 11 national championships, and suited up for the first time this past fall.
“IT’S KIND OF RIDICULOUS to think about. Of all the teams in the country…” Raso’s voice trails off. Wouldn’t you know it, after Carleton had a 54-game unbeaten streak snapped at the OUA championship last weekend, they’ve been given the second seed in the Final 8, setting up a first-round matchup against the seventh-seeded McMaster Marauders. Raso will be facing his former team, and his former friends. “McMaster basketball was what I was most passionate about growing up,” he says. “I went to tons of practices, never missed a game from when I was kid.”
Raso believes the time from when he left Mac to now will help ease any pressures about facing his former team, but that wasn’t the case when he played in Hamilton during a regular season matchup back in November. “There were a whole bunch of emotions going into that game,” he says. “Excited, anxious, but also nervous, I hadn’t been at Carleton for that long, and I saw a bunch of people who helped get me to where I was that day.”
Coach Raso says that no one has taken more shots than his son in the Mac gym. “But holy smokes, you can’t believe you’re saying it, but he’s now a Carleton guy,” he says. “But there’s no way he’ll worry about his own game against Mac this week, that would be selfish, and not the Carleton way.”
Hearing “the Carleton way,” come out of Joe Raso’s mouth is akin to hearing Gregg Popovich preach about the virtues of the Lakers. But Raso’s relationship with Ravens head coach Dave Smart has grown over the years, especially the past few months as they spent extended time together, including a spell where they both worked for the senior men’s national team. “Joe and I had our battles when he was coaching,” Smart says. “We had formed a bond when he was at Mac, and I think it’s grown since he’s been with the national program and Victor’s been here.”
Adds the elder Raso, who knows a thing or two about uppity parents: “We’ve been able to navigate the parent-coach relationship pretty well. We talk philosophies, but we never talk about Carleton basketball or about Victor. I’ll never be a meddling parent.”
“Vic’s been great too. He understands what team sports are about. He grew up in it,” Smart says. “Obviously, these kinds of situations, playing against his old team, you never know how people will react. But I’d be more comfortable with him than nearly anyone else.”
IT’S TOUGH TO ARGUE with the job Amos Connolly has done given the unenviable task of following in Joe Raso’s footsteps at McMaster. But in his first nationals appearance, what does he get when he arrives: A matchup against the three-time defending champions, on their home court, with his former captain in their lineup and his predecessor watching intently from the crowd. “It’s certainly a part of this job that isn’t standard,” Connolly says on the bus to Ottawa. “The former coach gets released, with his son on the team, and now this… tough to wrap your head around.”
Connolly says Victor Raso was invaluable in his last two years on the court at Mac—a leader who did nearly anything asked. But he said his captain’s departure was almost inevitable, because the typical trust that exists between player and coach simply wasn’t there. “You’re in an intimate team setting for 90 practices, 30 odd games, at some point, you’re going to want to kill your coach, but the benefit of the doubt keeps everyone on the same page,” Connolly says. “In our scenario, for obvious reasons, that didn’t really exist, and the team began to fracture.
“Respectfully,” Connolly continues, “with Vic gone, my team was finally able to build a culture on their own.”
WHILE EACH OF THE PRINCIPALS involved in this story maintain time has dulled the initial emotions of the drama, there’s no doubt each one still bears scars that are years old. “I’ve distanced myself from everybody. It’s tough not to,” Joe says. “It’s just one of the things you do, if you’re going to move on, you just go.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve lost a lot of friends on that team,” Victor says. “I don’t think it’s necessarily fair, but that’s the way it is.”
Raso says taking the court for the first time at the nationals will have a special significance, and he will be thinking of his dad up in the crowd. “My dad is my inspiration,” he says especially since he was let go by Mac.”
And though Victor says he can’t look past the opening game against McMaster, his dad says he would be ecstatic if his son could win the national championship that eluded him in 18 years as a head coach. ‘I would be proud of him,” he says. “It would be thrilling. It would tell me that hard work pays off. It would tell me that the whole journey was worth it.”