Record-Setting Player, International Professional, and Championship Coach

Randy Rick’s basketball life is a distinctly Northern California story that ultimately stretched halfway around the world. From Red Bluff to Butte College, from a record-setting career at Chico State to professional basketball in Australia, and eventually to more than two decades building one of Northern California’s respected community-college programs, Rick has spent much of his life on one side of a basketball court or the other.

What makes his career unusual is that Rick was not simply a successful coach who once played the game. He was an extraordinarily efficient basketball player, a Chico State record holder, an international professional scorer, and then a championship-winning coach.

Rick’s playing career began at Red Bluff High School, where he played point guard and earned First-Team All-Northern Section CIF honors. From Red Bluff, he moved on to Butte Community College, helping the Roadrunners reach the California State Community College Tournament. His shooting touch was already evident. At one point during his Butte career, Rick had made an astonishing 49 of 50 free throws, putting him among the nation’s leaders in free-throw percentage.

From Butte, Rick transferred to Chico State University, where his efficiency became part of Wildcat basketball history.

Playing shooting guard for Chico State, Rick became known not simply for scoring, but for how efficiently he scored. Feather River College’s published basketball history credits Rick with holding Chico State’s single-season and career field-goal-percentage records at 62.3 percent. That is an extraordinary number for a guard and demonstrates the characteristic that would follow Rick throughout his basketball life: he understood how to create and recognize a good shot.  
 

Rick was also part of one of the notable teams in Chico State basketball history. The Wildcats went 13–1 in league play and captured the Northern California Athletic Conference championship. The Feather River historical account also highlights Chico State’s victory over Stanford during Rick’s era—an extraordinary accomplishment for the Division II Wildcats against a major Division I program.

But college basketball was not the end of his playing career.

Rick took his game internationally, traveling to Albury, Australia, where he played professionally for two seasons. There, the efficient college guard developed into a prolific professional scorer. Feather River College’s biography of Rick reports that he averaged an outstanding 29 points per game while shooting approximately 91 percent from the free-throw line during his Australian professional career.

Accounts from his Australian playing days also credit Rick with producing two 50-point games, remarkable individual scoring performances that belong alongside the other shooting accomplishments of his career. While surviving online historical material from that era is limited and I have not located the original Australian box scores to independently document those two games, the performances are remembered as part of Rick’s professional basketball record.

Scoring 50 points once is exceptional at virtually any serious level of basketball. Doing it twice, while sustaining a 29-point scoring average over an international professional season, places Rick’s Australian career in an entirely different category from that of a former college player merely extending his career overseas.

Australia also became important to Rick’s development as a coach.

After his professional playing days, Rick returned to the Albury basketball community as a coach, serving as head coach of the Albury-Wodonga Roadrunners from 1991 to 1993. His coaching résumé would eventually span international professional basketball, NCAA Division II basketball, junior college basketball and high school basketball.

Back in Northern California, Rick became head coach of the Chico State freshman team in 1993–94 before joining legendary coach John Abell as an assistant at Butte College. During Rick’s time there, Butte captured back-to-back Golden Valley Conference championships. He later coached at the high-school level, including a head-coaching tenure at Los Molinos High School, before accepting the position that would define the next phase of his career: head men’s basketball coach at Feather River College in Quincy, California.

When Rick arrived at Feather River in 1999, he inherited a struggling program. The Golden Eagles had endured seasons of 2–29 and 3–25 and were near the bottom of the Golden Valley Conference.

Rick’s first season produced one of the great turnarounds in the program’s history.

Feather River exploded to a 25–5 record, went 9–1 in conference play and won the first Golden Valley Conference championship in school history. Two of Rick’s players, Jose Taylor and Eddie Shelby, earned California junior-college All-State recognition. Rick was named Golden Valley Conference Coach of the Year.

It was not a one-season miracle.

Rick remained at Feather River for 21 seasons, ultimately becoming a six-time Golden Valley Conference Coach of the Year, receiving the honor in 2000, 2003, 2005, 2012, 2016 and 2017. Feather River’s retirement announcement also credits his program with producing multiple California All-State players during his tenure.

His teams became known for an attacking, up-tempo style. But Rick’s philosophy extended beyond points and victories. Early in his Feather River tenure, the program emphasized structured study, academic support and transferring players to four-year universities. A Feather River media guide reported that the team GPA rose from 1.80 to 2.80 in a single season under the program’s academic-support structure.

Rick described the most rewarding part of coaching not as championships, but as helping young men mature and acquire skills that could benefit them throughout adulthood. That philosophy helps explain the longevity of his career. He approached basketball as both competition and education.

His résumé therefore spans nearly every level of the game:

Red Bluff High School standout.
Butte College national free-throw leader.
Chico State record-setting shooter.
Conference champion.
Professional basketball player in Australia.
29-point-per-game international scorer.
Two credited 50-point professional performances.
International professional coach.
High-school and college coach.
Six-time Golden Valley Conference Coach of the Year.
Twenty-one seasons leading Feather River College.

Randy Rick’s basketball legacy is ultimately about more than one statistic. Yet the statistics help tell the story: 62.3 percent from the field at Chico State, 49 of 50 free throws during one remarkable stretch at Butte, 29 points per game and 91 percent from the line professionally in Australia, plus two credited 50-point games.

Few coaches can teach shooting from the perspective of having performed it at that level themselves.

And fewer still can combine that playing résumé with more than two decades of building teams, winning championships and developing young players.

Randy Rick belongs in the conversation as one of Northern California basketball’s distinctive lifers—a record-setting player who became a professional scorer, and a professional scorer who became a championship coach and teacher of the game.