Skip Prosser is slow to talk about the phenomenal success of his Wake Forest basketball teams. At fifty-six, he’s the head coach of a high-profile college basketball program at a prestigious university. He has won regular season titles in three different conferences and postseason conference tournament crowns in two, coached in eighteen postseason tournaments, and is recognized by fans and peers alike as one of the most knowledgeable and competitive coaches in the nation.

But for all the hardware and accolades he’s collected, Prosser may be proudest of his blue-collar roots. He is quick to tell you that he was raised in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, a working-class town southwest of Pittsburgh. His no-nonsense father worked for the railroad and his mother, a schoolteacher, stressed the importance of academics. “People take pride in being known as a Pittsburgh guy, because it’s reflective of a work ethic, a toughness, an attitude of getting things done with no excuses,” he says.

Big new world
Prosser had never heard of the Merchant Marines when the academy’s basketball coach began recruiting him in high school. His decision to become a midshipman had little to do with sports. “Appointment to the Merchant Marine Academy came with it the opportunity for a free education, and given the cost of college, well let’s just say that my father thought it was a pretty good idea,” Prosser says.

The academy, with its demanding academics and year-at-sea requirement, exposed Prosser to a wider world. He flew on an airplane for the first time, then sailed to exotic ports such as Casablanca and parts of South America. “For someone who had basically spent his entire life in one place, my time at sea, the things I was exposed to ... it was just an unbelievable experience.”

After graduation, Prosser began his improbable rise up the coaching ladder. While many of his peers cut their teeth as Division I assistants, Prosser got his start through an unlikely family connection. He wanted to teach high-school history, but he wasn’t credentialed for public schools, so an aunt recommended her nephew to the headmaster at Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling, West Virginia. The school paid Prosser $7,200 to teach history, assist with the football team, and take over the ninth-grade basketball squad. That team, Prosser says, trailed by sixteen after its first quarter of play under his direction. By his second year at Linsly, Prosser was bitten by the coaching bug.

“I loved teaching history, but I also got a sense that there were times you could have more of an effect on young guys on the basketball court than you could in the classroom. “I thought it would be great to continue to teach and maybe work my way up to be a varsity high-school coach.”

Prosser stayed at Linsly for seven years, two as head varsity coach. He left to become head coach at Central Catholic High School in Wheeling, where he first worked with Dino Gaudio, who is still his assistant today at Wake.

Gaudio tells of the time when the eventual state champion Central squad returned late in a snowstorm from a disappointing loss to a strong team from bordering Ohio. While snow continued to fall and parents waited in the school parking lot, Prosser kept their sons in the locker room for more than an hour to talk about the missed opportunity and the importance of meeting challenges head on. “It was snowing like crazy, but not one parent complained. They knew that if Skip thought the kids needed to be there and hear what he had to say even at such a late hour, well then that’s exactly where they needed to be,” Gaudio remembers. “They knew that first and foremost, Skip had the best interests of their boys in mind, and they trusted him with no questions asked. He deals with our players at Wake in the exact same way.”

Spending his summers painting houses and collecting tickets at the local racetrack to supplement his teaching salary, Prosser also made time to work at basketball camps run by college coaches. He befriended Pete Gillen, then a young Notre Dame assistant, who was named head coach at Xavier University in Cincinnati in 1985. When Prosser learned of an opening on the Xavier staff, he called. “I know that coach Gillen offered the job to at least three other guys - heck, it might have been thirty-three others - before he offered it to me,” he says.

He had to move a young, growing family and accept the uncertainties of a college assistant job, but Prosser leapt.

“You get one chance to make your life extraordinary, and once you’re dead ... you’re gonna be dead for a long time,” he reasons. “I’d much rather take a risk as opposed to looking back and regretting a missed opportunity.”

After eight good years under Gillen, Prosser accepted the head spot at Baltimore’s Loyola College. He inherited a team that went 2-25 the previous season and led the players to a conference championship the next year and the school’s first-ever trip to the NCAA tournament.

The next season, Gillen left Xavier for Providence College, making Prosser the heir apparent. He returned to Cincinnati to lead the team to a 23-5 record in his first season. But it was off the court where Prosser faced perhaps his first significant challenge as a Division I head coach. Days before Xavier’s first-round NCAA tournament game, two key players (one the starting point guard) were involved in an incident at a local nightclub. Prosser suspended the players and days later saw his team suffer a narrow, five-point defeat to an Allenn Iverson-led Georgetown team.

“I believe in giving kids a second chance, but I also believe that people have to take responsibility for their actions,” Prosser says.

“I don’t want my kids going out in the world thinking it’s OK to show up late for work, or not live up to family responsibilities. At the end of the day, our most important job is preparing them for life.”

Becoming a Deacon
After seven successful years at Xavier and feelers from high-profile programs, Prosser came to Wake Forest in 2001. “I can assure you that as a ninth-grade coach in West Virginia, I never dreamed of being a head coach in the best basketball conference in the nation,” he says.

But even with his phenomenal success at Wake Forest - five consecutive postseason appearances, four seasons of more than twenty wins, an ACC championship, and a No. 1 national ranking - Prosser remains the self-effacing “Pittsburgh guy.”

“At the big summer recruiting showcases, a lot of high-profile coaches make something of an entrance, complete with their personal entourage,” notes Harvard University coach Frank Sullivan. “Skip has the resume to do that, but you’re more likely to see him slipping into the gym and sitting among a bunch of Division III coaches. Even with his phenomenal success, he hasn’t forgotten where he came from.”

This son of the rust belt has learned to embrace his adopted city. “Since moving to North Carolina, we have found people to be unbelievably kind, and it seems as if the level of support for the program has grown every year. Even last year when we struggled, at times mightily, people really stood by us,” Prosser says. Asked about the dangers and trends facing college sports, from television and shoe contracts to increasing pressure to win, Prosser is predictably direct.

“Commercialization cuts both ways. On one hand it allows us to offer players a lot of terrific opportunities, but it can also corrupt, and we see that in the scheduling demands dictated by television. Since I have a son in coaching [Prosser’s youngest son, Mark, is an assistant at Bucknell University], I worry about the impact of commercialization on the profession.”

Some argue that Wake Forest, with its lofty admissions standards, has no business trying to compete for ACC and national championships. Prosser will have none of that talk.

“You could wallow around in self-pity about it, but we are who we are - a small, very academically oriented private university. We’re not the University of North Carolina at Winston-Salem. And there are many things we can use to our advantage in recruiting, like the individual attention our students get from professors and the fact that a Wake Forest degree means so much when graduates head out into the world. I feel very, very good about sitting in a recruit’s living room and talking about what Wake Forest has to offer - both athletically and academically.”

His successes as the wet-behind-the-ears ninth-grade coach at Linsly and coming out on top against a top-ranked ACC foe in front of 15,000 rabid Deacon faithful at Joel Coliseum feel the same, he says.

“I’ve had a lot of great assistants and players, and together we’ve shared some unbelievable victories. But one of the biggest highs is graduation day, watching those kids’ faces as they walk across that stage after accomplishing something they weren’t really sure they could. Now that’s enduring.”

Bob Malekoff is an assistant professor of sport studies at Guilford College and a former college coach and athletic director.