Dino Gaudio would have been just fine had he stayed in his hometown Yorkville, coached at the local high school, conducted basketball camps throughout the Ohio Valley and become some kind of local coaching legend.

    But then that would have been just down right greedy. The Ohio Valley would have reaped all the benefits of having Dino Gaudio stay right here in the valley where he grew up. Coaching only our kids and just teaching basketball right here in the old Ohio Valley.

    Then again, Dino Gaudio is one of those guys that should be shared with the whole country. He is one of those coaches that are destine for the big arenas, the huge crowds and the players that eventually get paid to play.

    As exciting as he was to watch play during the mid-70s while playing on the diminutive gym in Tiltonsville at Buckeye South High School, it’s great to see Dino working the sidelines for one of the premier basketball teams in one of the premier Division I basketball conferences in the country.

    Dino’s life has gone full circle or should I say straight up the ladder since graduating from Buckeye South back in 1975.

    And one of his wisest decisions in all those years may have come early deciding to give up one profession for another. After graduating from ! Ohio University in 1981 with a degree in accounting and another in secondary education, the young man from Yorkville toiled for a year and a half as an accountant.

    “After a year and a half, I just knew that was not my calling. The just wasn’t me,” Dino told me recently as we took a walk down memory lane right into his work today.

    That decision may have been a good one for Dino Gaudio, but it turned out to be a great one for Wheeling Central, Xavier University, Army, Loyola (Md.) and finally Wake Forest. His decision years ago to give up counting numbers for figuring out Xs and Os has put Gaudio in one of the most demanding, yet one of the more sought after positions in college basketball.

    It was less than a year ago that Gaudio lost his long-time friend and coaching partner, Skip Prosser, to a massive heart attack that ended the career of one of the country’s most liked college coaches and left a major hole in the basketball program at Wake Forest.

    It was just two weeks after Prosser’s death that Gaudio was named to fill his shoes and lead one of the more prestigous basketball programs in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

    In the mid-80s Gaudio had replaced Prosser at Wheeling Central and guided the Maroon Knights to two West Virginia state championship games, winning one in ‘87. He had started as a 23 year-old assistant under Prosser and watched him take the Knights to a title in one of his four years at Central.

    Gaudio followed Prosser to Xavier in ‘87 joining the staff of Pete Gillen. When Prosser went to Loyola (Md.) to coach, the young Gaudio took over a struggling program at West Point. He would later take over the head coaching spot at Loyola before rejoining Prosser as one of his assistant when Prosser became the head coach at that school.

    Of course, when Prosser moved on to Wake Forest, Gaudio followed his friend and became a Demon Deacon assistant coach.

    After all those years in the shadows of the highly-respected ! Prosser, 2007 brought Gaudio to center stage and the country found out rather quickly just how good a coach Dino Gaudio really is.

    In his first year as Wake Forest’s head coach, Gaudio led a very young Demon Deacon squad to a 17-13 record that included a win over a highly-ranked Duke squad. Aside from Duke and final four finisher North Carolina, Wake Forest had one of the best records in the ACC.

    All of that earned Gaudio a selection as the ACC coach of the year by Rivals.com.

    “Personnally and professionally, I love what I do,” Gaudio told me. “You have to have a passion for it.”

    No question that Gaudio has a passion for basketball and another for coaching.

    “Coming from the valley, I developed a great work ethic because this is a blue collar area and people in the valley have a great work ethic,” he said. “As soon as I got out of high school, I started working. One summer I worked at Wheeling-Pitt. Another summer I drove a dump truck. I got up in the morning and worked hard and that serves me well now.”

    Gaudio pointed out that in August of ‘81 he became a business teacher and assistant coach at Wheeling Central. He recalls the job opening up when the late Jim Thomas took a coaching job at Wheeling Park.

    “I applied for the job,” Gaudio remembers. “Stan Kanieski interviewed me from 10 to 11 in the morning and by noon they called me and told me I had the job. Skip actually wanted Dubie Dailer, but he wasn’t available. The same night I was hired, Central had an open gym and that’s where I met Skip for the first time.”

    “I was very lucky to get with Skip. He was my mentor. He was like a older brother to me,” Gaudio proudly said while mentioning that he was Prosser’s best man at his wedding and Prosser was a godfather for one of Gaudio’s children.

    Gaudio has spent seven years at Wake Forest, the last as a head coach. There was probably no one better suited to replaced Prosser upon!  his passing.

    “It was a great experience for me,” he said adding. “It’s not where you are, but who you are there with.”

     “I think that was the most difficult time, the most difficult event I have experienced in my lifetime,” he said about Prosser’s sudden death. “I had been with him those two days before recruiting in Florida. We (along with Prosser’s son) went to dinner, watched games until 10. That next morning Skip was flying back to Winston-Salem to close up camp.”

    “When the camp was over, he was to fly back to Orlando. I was going to pick him up at the airport and then we were going to go see two kids that we were recruiting.”

    Gaudio said that when he got word of what had happened to Prosser, he had to tell Prosser’s son.

    “It was an incredible shock. I never knew a better man,” Gaudio said. “When he passed away, there were head coaches in the ACC that were crying. He was just so respected. Even maintenance people were in tears. He just treated everybody the  same. He never lost the common touch that he had.”

    “In this business, when we recruit it is highly-competitive. You’re going to have a falling out with someone. With Skip, it never happened. If you had a problem, he picked up the phone and talked it out.”

    With the passing of Skip Prosser, Gaudio was thrust into a strange position. He had always wanted to be a head coach at a school like Wake Forest, but never wanted to be in a position to loss a best friend to create the opportunity. Life is strange and that is exactly what happened.

    “I wish Skip was still here. As much as I wanted the opportunity, I never ever would have wanted this job under these circumstances. I would have been happy coaching with Skip forever.”?    “But when they ask me about taking the job, I told them that nobody is going to a better job than I will. I told them that nobody would be more motivated, more driven than me to finish what!  Skip had started.

    “We (the other coaches and players) had all gone through it together and that’s what helped up get through it.”

    It wasn’t as if Gaudio had never been a head coach. He was a head coach at Army and Loyola, neither school noted for having great basketball programs, but a challenge none the less.

    “It was tough, but I would not trade it for anything,” he said about coaching at Army. “It prepared me for what I’m doing now. I had to recruit the whole country. There is no greater challenge than to coach at West Point. Two of the men I coached were killed in the Middle East.”

    Coaching in the high profile ACC and at Wake against national powers like North Carolina and Duke, it’s no easy job. There is a lot more than what you see on TV.

    “I had been a head coach before and the coaching part is the easy part,” Gaudio points out. “This conference is the best in America, but coaching is coaching, I don’t care if you are coaching at Wheeling Central or Wake Forest.”

    “The big thing for me is the tremendous amount of time its takes. It’s incredible how many directions you are pulled. You just have to be careful. When I got this job in August, I never had a day off, but that’s everybody in this business. That’s just the way it is.”

    Gaudio describe his daily regime as tough and he pointed out that he just has to take care of himself. At 51, he remains in great shape. He still runs and most importantly, he still plays some hoops.

    “We beat Duke on a Sunday, I never slept that night. Came in the office the next day to start to prepare for North Carolina. On Tuesday, my assistant and I took a 7:30 flight to Portland, Oregon by way of Chicago. Watched a high school game and by 11:30 was back on a flight to Chicago, then a 5 a.m. to Greensboro and I was at practice at 9:30 a.m. that morning. That’s why you have to take care of yourself.”

    He was quick to point out that he ! has never missed a practice.

    “We had a very good year. We had the best record in the ACC against top 50 teams and we started two freshmen and three sophomores and counted on two other freshmen off the bench.”

    In assessing the ACC, Gaudio said that the conference is so tough that that he believes the team with the most “pros” is always going to win the conference.

    “I think we can be a very good team next year,” Gaudio said in looking at the immediate future. “If you can win the ACC, you can do well in the NCAA.”

    Having coached 12 players that have gone on to the NBA, he said that that has to be a players goal at that level.

    As for Gaudio, his goal is that same as any kid from Yorkville that finds his way into the ACC as a head coach at one of the top Division I schools in the country…win a national title.

    And while Gaudio may be far from the gyms and the camps in the Ohio Valley, he is still right here deep in those blue collar hearts that root for him at Wake Forest. Like they always say, you can take the Valley boy out of the Valley, but you never take the Valley out of the Valley boy.