I was sad to hear the news a couple of weeks ago that Kasey Ulin was stepping down as the longtime head coach for the Port Angeles boys basketball team.
Ulin has had an exceptional level of sustained success, something that is hard to find at a small 2A school. He went 158-101 in his 11 years in Port Angeles and that only tells part of the story.
He won three league championships and the Roughriders came in either first or second every year for six years between 2019 and 2024. It was a battle every one of those years between North Kitsap and Port Angeles for the Olympic League title. His teams finished first, second or third seven times. Between 2018 and 2024, his won-loss record was 120-56. Even last year, the team struggled a bit at 11-14, his first losing record since 2016, and came within one game, within one quarter, really, of qualifying for the 2A state tournament.
Ulin also coached his team to a sixth-place finish at the state tournament in 2022, the best showing by the Roughriders since the 1990s.
He had that success in a very powerful Olympic League, which has produced two state champions in the past five years in North Kitsap and Bremerton.
That’s insane consistency for a 2A school. And now that consistent success is gone. I can’t imagine whoever replaces him can possibly replicate what he did. They will have massive shoes to fill and I don’t envy them one bit.
I’m used to seeing coaches come and go at smaller schools. The pay isn’t that great, the hours are incredibly long. Lots of long, grueling road trips.
Ulin took his kids to the Yakima SunDome every year over Christmas. What a lot of people also may not realize was how much time he spent in the summer working with kids in summer leagues, traveling all over the state to play up to 40 games.
That was an incredible level of dedication. It wasn’t for the money. I think the good coaches do it for another payoff, seeing kids grow, seeing them succeed after you’re done being their coach. Many of his players have gone on to play some level of college ball and moved on to college degrees and careers.
Ulin took the Port Angeles job a couple of years before I arrived. He once admitted to me that he had no idea what he was doing when he first started coaching. He took over a weak program and went 5-15 in his first year. It didn’t take him long to turn it around.
He was always available after games, always had something to say, win or lose. What I was struck by was how he was always upbeat and positive about his players, always building his players up, never tearing them down.
One of my favorite memories of Ulin was my first year here in 2017. He hadn’t quite built a powerhouse yet and the Riders struggled badly one night in a bad loss, losing by more than 20 points to Olympic.
He kept the kids in the locker room for a particularly long time, perhaps 30 minutes, which is never a good sign and when they came out they were all red-faced. “Oh, oh,” I thought. “I dread this…”
I’ve talked to too many coaches after bad losses who won’t talk to me, or snap at me or simply not in the mood to say anything. I once had a football coach say to me, “Just write that we suck,” and slam the phone down. I simply hate talking to a coach after a bad loss. I never know how to approach them, never know how exactly to phrase my questions.
Ulin’s face was beet red, too. It was obvious it had been a very tense conversation in the locker room. When I talked to him, he simply looked off in the distance and said, “We’re going to be all right…” I asked another question and he gave the same answer looking to the gym wall off in the distance, “We’re going to be just fine…”
I wanted to say to him, “Stop it, Kasey, you’re scaring me…”
The funny thing is, they DID turn out to be all right. Later in the season, they won four straight games to qualify for the district tournament.
I don’t want to use this platform to dig into the controversy about Ulin’s departure. All I can say to the people who wanted a change in the program, be careful what you wish for. Change is not by definition a good thing. His departure leaves a huge hole in the Port Angeles sports scene that will be very hard to fill.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at plabossiere@peninsuladailynews.com.
