Darren Kinnard
Section618.com
Saturday was a tough day for many people in the Southern Illinois region as news spread of the passing of basketball coaching icon Rich Herrin. Herrin passed away late Friday night at the age of 87.
Herrin won 677 games as a high school coach for Okawville, Benton and Marion. It was following his incredibly successful 25-year run as the Rangers’ head coach that Herrin took on a new challenge–making the jump to Division I college basketball as the head coach of the SIU Salukis.
Herrin took over a dreadful Saluki program and completely turned it around. He led Southern to the NIT by his fourth season in Carbondale. That started a streak of seven straight postseason appearances, capped by three straight trips to the NCAA Tournament. Those trips came courtesy three straight MVC Tournament championships, the only three-peat in Valley Tournament history.
Herrin finished 225-174 in 13 seasons as the Salukis’ head coach. In addition to the three MVC Tournament titles, Herrin guided SIU to a pair of MVC regular season championships, one in 1989-90 and another two years later. He remains second on SIU’s all-time wins list behind William McAndrew and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2000. He’s seventh on the MVC all-time wins list and was inducted into the conference’s Hall of Fame in 2010.
Following his time at SIU, Herrin returned to coach at the high school level at Marion from 2002-07. He later started the basketball program at Morthland College in 2012.
A quick scroll through various social media platforms provided just a small glimpse of the impact Herrin had on people throughout the region in one way or another.
“The things that he’s accomplished or what he has done for basketball in the state of Illinois and for Southern Illinois is just amazing,” said Nashville head boys basketball coach Wayne Harre, who played for Herrin at SIU from 1985-87. “We talk about how many lives he’s touched and how many lives he’s changed. The way he lived his life changed people’s lives, so that’s what’s really neat about it.”
“If you played for him in high school, you were a college player, if you were a guy that went on and played in the NBA, and you played for him–we all had the same common bond,” said Johnston City head boys basketball coach Scott Burzynski, who played for Herrin at SIU from 1992-96. “We knew as players and people, Coach wanted the best for us. He did anything to help his players in any way, and that continued after your playing days.”
Nowhere is Herrin’s impact more apparent than in the coaching fraternity. The “Herrin Coaching Tree” has numerous branches, as many former players, managers, and associates have followed in his footsteps.
“One thing he said often to me was ‘You don’t have to treat them all the same, but you have to treat them all fairly’,” said Ron Winemiller, the current Benton Rangers head coach, who was a team manager for Herrin at SIU. “That’s really profound, and something that has stuck with me. He said ‘some of them, you’ve got to get after ’em a little bit, and some of them, you’ve got to hug on ’em a little bit.’ That’s something I’ve always taken to heart.”
It was Herrin’s approach that caught the younger coaches’ attention. He was always there for support and available if they needed advice, but he never critiqued their coaching.
“He said ‘Big guy, you did something the old man couldn’t do. You went up there (to state) and won one. I’m proud of you’,” said former Meridian head coach Erik Griffin, who played for Herrin at SIU from 1987-91 and led the Bobcats to a second place finish in the 2015 1A State Tournament. “That validation right there meant the world to me. That will stick with me over all the funny stories and everything else because it’s like a parent telling you they’re proud of you.”
In the past few years, Herrin was a fixture in gyms throughout the region nearly every night watching games, often watching one of the branches of his tree.
“Yes, he won a lot of games, and he coached for a (long) time,” said Carterville head boys basketball coach Shane Hawkins, who played for Herrin at SIU from 1994-98. “But the number of lives he touched–it’s going to be really hard to find somebody with a bad word to say about him because he was a very genuine person.”
And that’s what made Saturday’s news so tough, gang.