Posted by Tom Markowski (The Detroit News) on Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Not to be forgotten
Dave Soules was one of those basketball coaches who didn't care whether anyone noticed him. He went about his business quietly with never a thought of tooting his own horn. If you didn't like him, well, there was nothing he could do about that. What he cared about and what meant most to him were the players he coached and the lives he touched.
Soules died of cancer last Friday. He was the boys basketball coach at Riverview Gabriel Richard but most will remember him as the basketball coach at Detroit East Catholic. It was there that Soules made his mark. In 1973 East Catholic won the Class C title. The Chargers would go on to win seven more, all in Class D, the last one in '97. East Catholic was a small-school powerhouse back then and Soules ran a clean program. There was not a hint of improprieties or back-door recruiting. Soules had good, sometimes great, teams because he got players who wanted to play for him. They knew they would get a fare shot at playing and they would be part of a system. Even if you were a bad kid who had made mistakes Soules would give you a second and third chance to make the team and make something of your life. Soules cared about kids in Detroit. He cared that they went to school, graduated and became a man. Did he like to win? Sure he did. The wins he cared about were the faces of the players who went through his program and made it as members of society.
