At Wake, Prosser's Spirit Lives On

There still are moments when Dino Gaudio cries. It can come on in an instant, and it comes on often because the reminders still are there every single day.

"I'm watching tape of our Maryland game from last year," he said on a gray afternoon in College Park before Wake Forest played Maryland last Tuesday. "I'm trying to focus on the game and the plays, but there's Skip coaching on the sideline. He's right there, alive and coaching and doing what I watched him to do for so many years."

He paused and reached into his briefcase. "These are his Maryland game notes from last year. He always kept them in his jacket pocket. Look at all the detail. It's pure Skip right there."

It has been almost seven months since Skip Prosser died suddenly and shockingly on a hot July afternoon in the basketball office at Wake Forest. He had gone out for his noon run and walked back into his office. He walked past Mary Ann Justus, the basketball office secretary.

A few minutes later, Justus buzzed him about a call. No response. Maybe, she thought, he was on his cellphone. She tried a couple more times. Still no answer. That was when she sent assistant coach Mike Muse in to check on the boss. He was slumped on the couch, unconscious. There was nothing the paramedics could do. He was dead at 56.

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Gaudio had been in Orlando with Prosser a day earlier looking at high school players. Prosser had flown home at 6 a.m. on the morning of July 26 because he always liked to be there for the final day of a basketball camp session. Gaudio had been concerned about him that day.

"We all push too hard at times, but Skip just wouldn't rest," he said. "He had been in Vegas at a camp on Monday and flown home on a red-eye. We worked all day Tuesday and then flew to Orlando first thing Wednesday morning. He was going to fly home at 10:30 on Thursday but changed it to 6 so he could spend some time with the campers and get in a full day of work."

Just before Prosser ran that day, assistant coach Jeff Battle saw him stretching and tried to talk him out of it.

"Coach, it's just too hot," he said. "Take a day off."

"No way," Prosser told him. His goal was to get in good enough shape to start playing noon hoops again in the fall.

Gaudio was at his hotel preparing to leave for a game when he got the first phone call: Prosser was being rushed to the hospital. Gaudio and Prosser had been friends and colleagues for 27 years dating from the days when Gaudio was Prosser's assistant at Central Catholic High School in Wheeling, W.Va. After Prosser had won a state title and left to become an assistant coach at Xavier, Gaudio succeeded him there.