Port Clinton's Rick Dominick reflects on satisfying 43-year career

The Port Clinton school board honored its retirees in May, and Rick Dominick, who worked in education for 43 years, was among the guests of honor. "I got emotional and told them, 'You had me here for 30 years, I never worked a day,'" said Dominick in an interview this week. "I never looked at it as being work. I just enjoyed coming in." Dominick did more than just show up, though. He worked as a school counselor, business teacher and athletic director. He coached boys basketball, girls basketball, girls tennis and boys golf. A master of self-depreciating humor, Dominick downplayed his impact and thanked the people who hired him and who he worked with at PC and St. Mary Central Catholic. He adopted a simple formula for working in education. "When I moved into the counselor's office at Port Clinton in 2003, Margy VanLerBerghe was the other counselor," Dominick said. "She was good for me because she refocused me. Every solution for her came back to what's best for kids. I used that from 2003 for the rest of my career. Anything you're looking to do, at the end of the day — what was best for the kids? "That's what needed to be done. In education, that always has to be front and center." Getting started Dominick graduated from St. Mary CC in 1979 with an eye on being an educator because he enjoyed being a student. "I had a great experience in high school," he said. "Denny Rectenwald, who ended up hiring me at Port Clinton when he was the superintendent, was my high school principal. He was a people person, a kid person. I had some really great teachers at St. Mary's." After graduating from Bowling Green State University with a degree in Business Education Without Shorthand, Dominick began his career at SMCC. He was hired as a business teacher and also coached junior varsity girls basketball and tennis. Dominick had a passion for sports, stoked by his parents Ermindo and Angela. "My parents really got me into sports," he said. "They were big supporters of St. Mary's. On Saturday nights, we'd go to the Bizzy Bee and get a burger, then we'd go to the St. Mary's football games. My mom and dad always liked to sit in the top row on the north side of the press box. I'd climb up all those stairs. "Basketball games, they'd always like to sit at the top of balcony, right in the middle. I swear I learned math because I would keep score." Dominick also coached boys basketball at SMCC. He was the varsity coach for two years before moving on to Port Clinton in 1996. He was a business teacher until taking a counseling job in 2003. He took over athletic director duties in 2013, which wasn't a full-time job at PC. "You can't do this without great support people," Dominick said. "I was blessed to have Amy Kelly and Tracey Tomaselli. They were phenomenal. Coaches knew if they needed something, go see Tracy, go see Amy. I made the important decisions, but bottom line, I couldn't have done what I did without Amy and Tracy because I was a part-time AD. The school counselor position was the priority. Athletic director, I found time in the day." Basketball fix Dominick coached boys golf, girls tennis, girls basketball and boys basketball at Port Clinton. He was an assistant coach on the Redskins' boys basketball team that finished as the state runner-up in Division II in 2010 to Dayton Dunbar. "When we walked out for the semifinal game for warmups (at the Schottenstein Center), it was real," he said. "That was so much fun. We still talk to the kids on that team, the breaks we had along the way. We were obviously very, very good, but we had to catch a couple breaks." Dominick got together with members of that coaching staff earlier this week to talk hoops. "Basketball was my love," he said. "As I was cutting my teeth, I worked camps at Ohio State, Ohio Northern, Bowling Green. This was kind of before the team camps. I probably worked five weeks every summer at those different camps." He also saw a lot of great basketball with his good friend, Mike McLaughlin. They began attending state tournament games in 1979. "One of the first games we saw was Clark Kellogg's 51-point game (in the 1979 Division I final)," he said. "We were center court on the mezzanine at St. John Arena. I learned as much working camps and going to state tournament games as you could paying 200 bucks to go to a clinic." Dominick enjoyed coaching all sports, especially golf. "Golf was probably the most enjoyable from the standpoint of the camaraderie with the other coaches. Just good guys," he said. "And I had a great rapport with the golfers I had at Port Clinton. I had maybe five players who were players of the year in the SBC." Great facilities Dominick played a role in developing and maintaining the great facilities at Port Clinton High School. Tru-Lay Stadium underwent a renovation in the 2015 (and will get new turf next year), a fieldhouse was opened in 2021 and the basketball gym got a makeover in 2023. Many community members played pivotal roles in the football project. "I'm gonna give all the credit to our superintendent Pat Adkins, our treasurer Jeff Dornbusch and our board education. They wanted the best for our kids," Dominick said. "The stadium project was a joint project between the district and the Fullbackers Club. That was a public-private collaborative effort. "It took some work just because we were land-locked. How are you gonna squeeze a stadium, an eight-lane track, stands and enough variance to keep the city happy? "The field actually turned some from where it was originally to be able to get the eight lanes in. Before it was built we had a six-lane track. The straightaway was eight, but we only had six on the round." The baseball and softball fields recently went through renovations, and the baseball infield is especially notable. "We just poured a lot of money into our baseball and softball diamonds," Dominick said. "They tore up the sod for the infield on the baseball diamond. The infield that's there now was grown in Indiana for the (Chicago) Cubs, for Wrigley Field. At the last minute, the Cubs decided they wanted to go with a different type of grass, so we got that infield." Dominick spent this past school year working with Alex Sheridan, who will take over as a full-time athletic director for grades 7-12. "With how they did it, it allowed Alex to spend a year with me," Dominick said. "I told Alex from Day 1: Watch everything I do and do the opposite and you'll be very successful. Alex has developed a great rapport with our coaches and has some innovative things he wants to do. He'll do a terrific job." Tribe, Redskins Dominick, 65, plans to do some traveling with his wife, Sherri, with his new-found free time. They are expecting their first grandchild in September. His son Cody and daughter-in-law Kelsey live in Brecksville. "They waited for me to retire to have a kid," Dominick said. "How considerate is that?" Cody and Kelsey both teach and Cody is an assistant girls basketball coach at Berea-Midpark. "I couldn't have screwed him up too much because he's following the same path I did," Dominick said. Dominick plans on getting a ballpark pass next year for Guardians home games. He is a lifelong Cleveland fan and joked that now that he's retired, he'll get to follow his teams more closely. "It'll hit me on August 1 when I don't have to go back," Dominick said. "I told Pat (Adkins) from the group from the basketball team, I said, 'For the first time, I can actually look forward to training camp.' Now I can enjoy all the banter of who's going to be quarterback. It'll hit me, too, on Friday nights when I don't have to go to a game." PC recognized its retirees at a recent honors assembly and principal Gary Steyer surprised Dominick with a video tribute from Guardians play-by-play announcer Tom Hamilton. "Steyer set it up," Dominick said. "He reached out in September and the video showed up in inbox in November. It was very touching." The Guardians "are still the Tribe" as far as Dominick is concerned. He's also protective of Port Clinton's Redskins nickname. The national frenzy to change mascot names has died down, and Dominick thinks the nickname will be around for a long time. "My observation is as long as our superintendent stays there, it's not going anywhere," he said. "With our board of education that's in place, it's not gonna change. Truthfully, I think if they tried to change that name, 80 percent of that town would go ballistic. It's what they were raised on. I don't see that, in my lifetime, changing." Staying involved Dominick has retired, but he'll still work. He is the secretary/treasurer for the new Northern Ohio Conference, which begins play this fall with 10 teams that left the Sandusky Bay Conference. As an athletic director, he was involved in meetings that shaped the NOC. "We're sitting in a meeting and discussing it," Dominick said. "A couple guys, I think Brad Watson from Perkins and maybe Josh (Schlotterer) from Norwalk looked at me and said, 'You're retired next year. What are you gonna be doing?' Honestly, it took me 30 seconds to say yes." Dominick will be in charge of managing the day-to-day workings of the NOC — awards, calendars, agendas. He opened a checking account earlier this week. "I've kinda joked that I've gone from having two bosses — my superintendent Patrick Adkins and my principal Gary Steyer — to having 20," he said. "I've got 10 ADs and 10 principals that I answer to. It is a fabulous group. Like myself, they have a passion for high school sports and want to give kids the best possible experience." The job is a perfect fit for the upbeat Dominick, who said he can't totally walk away from high school sports. "It allows me to stay involved in high school sports, which is still the purest form," he said. "Kids don't play because it's a job; they're not getting paid to be there. They play because they have a passion for their sport, and probably more than anything, they love being with their teammates, classmates and friends. "I have so much respect watching our kids in particular, but all kids, they play their hearts out. I'm not gonna lie: I can't go cold turkey. I'll still go to Port Clinton stuff; I'm still attached to those kids and those coaches. I loved what I was doing, so I can't just quit."