By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
If he didn’t have to keep his phone on because of his teaching duties, Dave Faust makes it clear that in recent days, “I would have turned it off – and my email, too.”
The Saint Henry boys’ basketball coach isn’t much into social media these days, he says, despite all the wonderfully congratulatory messages he’s been told have been coming his way.
“I’ll read them when this is all over,” he says of all the folks who want to wish him well for tying Kenney Shields’ record for high school basketball wins in Northern Kentucky, which he did with his Crusaders’ 74-63 victory at Boone County Thursday.
Dave Faust did not have an easy night at Boone County Thursday.
He’s not much for social media, Dave confesses. Which could be a problem, his daughter just informed him.
“She said if I didn’t like all this,” well maybe she’d better not tell him about the special site Saint Henry created for Friday night’s home game against Bluegrass United out of Lexington for former players coming back to celebrate breaking the record. The word is the response has been overwhelming.
“I haven’t said a word about it and I’m not going to mention it one time,” Faust says. But the players know. “From the media,” they said after the game.
No. 460. And all at Saint Henry, where he’s been the head basketball coach since 1992.
“That’s incredible, the longevity, and to do it all at a small Catholic school,” said someone who would know, Terry Connor, AD at Faust’s alma mater, Thomas More, where both Faust, and his parents, Tom and Millie, are in the Athletic Hall of Fame.
“He’s a great coach,” Connor said, “and a better person.”
One by one, all three game officials congratulated Faust outside the locker room as they left. As did his players.
Getting into the game for Dave Faustgoing for win No. 460
“Congratulations, Coach,” each said softly.
But his players said they felt no special pressure to go out and win this one for their coach. “Not really,” said senior Matt Resing. There was no pressure from their coach. Not a mention of the record.
In fact, if Faust had been worried about the record, he’d have never scheduled the way he did, opening with road games at Conner, Cooper and NewCath followed by Covington Catholic, Highlands, Cincinnati St. Xavier and Louisville St. Xavier.
But thanks to Resing’s 31 points made it happen against a hot-shooting Boone County team playing much better than their 1-16 record would indicate. Juniors Maddox Jones and Mason Hall, each scoring 25 points, made a game of this after Saint Henry jumped out by 21, 54-33, with 3:01 left in the third quarter.
“I’m glad it’s over,” Faust said, “they (Boone County) didn’t quit.”
Neither did Faust, who stayed with the parochial school in Erlanger throughout. Just once, when Conner came calling in 1998, did he consider it.
Dave Faust gets it together for his Crusaders at Boone County.
But he stayed. And now he can look at a program where he’s won three All “A” state championships, eight All “A” Ninth Region titles, one Ninth Region title with a 30-5 2003 team that had it not drawn state champ Mason County in the first round of the Sweet 16, who knows how far they could have gone.
“First of all, he’s a very good person,” said Shields, who is scheduled to present Faust an award ball signifying the new record when it happens, hopefully Friday night.
And while the two have never coached against one another, with Shields leaving Highlands for NKU in 1988 where he would win another 306 games, they did face each other three times when Faust was a Newport Catholic guard and Shields coaching at St. Thomas and Highlands.
“He was a very sound fundamental player, a good decision-maker,” Shields says. But the two are more likely to see one another these days at 3 o’clock Mass at St. Peter-in-Chains Cathedral, they say, than on a basketball court.
Dave Faust, a calm coaching presence on the St. Henry bench.
Shields has been the major publicist for Faust’s accomplishment, keeping track of it more closely than Faust has. As to the exact number of wins he had and how close he was, “I didn’t know until last Friday when a teacher at school told me,” Faust says.
But despite being away from home, the Boone County PA person did note Faust’s record-tying win as the teams shook hands, drawing a large response from the Saint Henry crowd.
“I was really lucky,” Faust says, for all the coaches he’s had, from the people who got him started as a second-grader at St. Anthony’s in Bellevue, Ralph and Jack Meyer, to the freshman coach at NewCath, Steve Jostworth, who had him coaching the second freshman team when he was a senior, to his high school coach, John Gross, then Jim Weyer, his first coach at Thomas More, and Jim Connor, who coached him his final three years there.
“I loved the game, I loved all sports, basketball, baseball, football,” but as to why and exactly when he decided his life would be coaching, “I don’t really know . . . I guess I just grew into it.”
His family certainly gave him that chance. His dad, Tom, may have had to excuse himself right out the gym door when Dave’s games got close, or when he was on the free throw line, but he was as connected as could be when it came to Notre Dame football, where he might as well have been on the staff.
And his late parents did as much as anyone working the bingo and raising money for TMU’s Connor Convocation Center as anyone, hence their naming to the Hall of Fame.
And now their son is a certifiable Northern Kentucky Hall of Famer.
“I think they would be awfully proud of me,” Dave says when asked how Tom and Millie would view this day.
SHORT SHOTS: Next in line as far as coaching wins in Northern Kentucky high schools is Newport’s innovative Stan Arnzen with 452, then comes Covington Holmes’ Tom Ellis, who had 417 here with another 198 at Bardstown for a total of 615 as the last remaining coach at a major school in Kentucky to coach football, basketball and baseball . . . Others with Northern Kentucky connections for part of their careers include Steve Wright, who started at Walton-Verona but acquired the bulk of his 731 wins at South Laurel, Southwestern and Montgomery . . . Mason County’s Allen Feldhaus Sr., a player at Boone County and Kentucky, recorded 512 wins, primarily at Mason County while Ludlow’s Carl Wenderoth coached at Scott and Grant County, where he totaled 500 wins.
BOX SCORE<
SAINT HENRY 25 13 20 16—74
BOONE COUNTY 19 10 14 20—63
SAINT HENRY (9-9): Fedders 14, Grayson 13, Kaiser 10, Lemmond 1, Ravenscraft 3, Reis 3, Resing 31, Shea 1: TOTAL 74.
BOONE COUNTY (1-16): Bodkin 8, Burks 3, Hall 25, Jones 25, Raleigh 2: TOTAL 63.
When do you think he will break the record? It doesn’t say here when the next St. Henry game is.