A storied coach, two talented athletes and an association were honoured last Friday with inductions into the Notre Dame Sports Wall of Fame.

Joining the wall were Mike Rao, Larissa Bruzzese, Mike Hominuck and the Notre Dame Alumni Association.

MIKE RAO

Rao made his mark as a boys basketball coach before concluding his career by coaching the girls soccer team to a fourth-place finish at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships.

Rao coached the midget boys for two seasons, the junior boys for 16 years and the senior boys for 19 seasons.

With the senior boys, Rao guided teams to OFSAA on seven occasions, made the top eight several times and finished fourth one on occasion.

“For me, it was the people I surrounded myself with. I was blessed to have people to go through a lot of the good times with and some of the bad times,” he said. “A lot of the time, you need those people because when you do well you double the pleasure. When you do poorly, you divide the pain.”

For Rao, it was more about the journey than anything else.

“I was always proud of every team and all the teams because we are a small town in Welland, but we always competed at the top level. We competed against Toronto year in and year out and worked with what we had. For me, the idea was to bring them together and do the best we could. I thought we did that a lot of times.”

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