Chadron State College Athletic Hall of Fame
Like Steve Aggers, Rick Samuels is a native of Laramie, Wyo., and attended Mid-Plains Community College before coming to CSC. Both became highly-successful college coaches. Samuels was a guard on CSC basketball teams three years, graduating in 1971. He was a starter the first two years and was an alternate his senior season after Rick Brown and Scott Jones, both CSC Hall of Fame members, joined the team.
Samuels began his coaching career at Chadron High. The Cardinals won the Western Conference championship in 1973-74, his second year there. He was an assistant coach at Eastern Washington and Iowa State before serving as the head coach at Eastern Illinois University for 25 years.
His career record at EIU was an even-Steven 360-360. When he resigned in 2004 his length of tenure was second nationally among Division I coaches, exceeded only by Jim Boeheim’s 29 years at Syracuse.
In 2000-01 after his team won 21 games, he was selected by the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association as the state’s Division I Coach of the Year. Also, 64 of the 72 seniors who completed their eligibility while Samuels was the coach, graduated, placing the Panthers among the top 10 percent of the teams in the nation in graduation rate.
He was the first captain of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddle at CSC and was tapped by Blue Key National Honor Fraternity. He is now the development officer for Lincoln College in Illinois. His wife, the former Jan Fisher of Rapid City, S.D., also is a CSC graduate. The Samuels live at Mattoon, Ill.
