Warner Pacific Basketball Coach Bart Valentine to Retire After 12 Years Leading Knights
PORTLAND, Ore. – After mentoring hundreds of athletes and winning state and conference championships at the high school and college levels, Warner Pacific College men’s basketball coach Bart Valentine has announced he will end his 36-year coaching career at the conclusion of the current basketball season, his 12th at Warner Pacific. He will continue to teach mathematics at the college.
“My focus has never been on winning games,” said Valentine, 58. “My desire has been that my athletes would learn lessons through our program that would make them successful in life.”
Warner Pacific recruited Valentine in 1999 as athletic director and basketball coach to help reinstate an intercollegiate athletics program that had closed six years earlier due to budget cuts. A 1975 graduate of Warner Pacific, Valentine had been a successful Oregon high school coach at Molalla, Colton, and finally at West Linn, where his boys team won the Oregon 4A state basketball championship in 1997.
Valentine felt a personal calling to rebuild Warner Pacific’s athletics program as a way to give back to the school that had launched his teaching career. Starting with only four sports in 1999 the program grew to eleven sports by 2008. In the process, Valentine adapted his basketball recruiting and coaching style to serve diverse student athletes who were attracted to Warner Pacific’s urban campus. In 2009, Valentine accepted his current full-time faculty position and stepped down as athletic director, but continued to coach.
“Bart Valentine has served as an example to our entire campus community in the ways he embraced Warner Pacific College’s urban mission,” said Warner Pacific College President Andrea P. Cook, Ph.D. “Bart is a great coach and an exceptional role model. He has not only made his mark on our campus, but more importantly, on the lives of the young men he has coached and mentored.”
From 2006 to 2010, Valentine’s teams captured or shared the Cascade Conference regular season championship twice, won the conference tournament once, and made five consecutive trips to the NAIA Division II national tournament. Valentine was named conference Coach of the Year for men’s basketball in 2006 and he entered the 2010 – 2011 season as the winningest coach in school history, with a record of 213 wins and 144 losses.
“He's one of the best coaches I've been around, at any level,” said Danny Miles, who has coached two-time national champion and conference rival Oregon Institute of Technology for 40 years. “I've known coaches at the Division 1 level and he's as good as any of them, [but] he’s even a better man.”
Valentine says he is proud that Warner Pacific’s Athletics program has allowed a wide range of athletes – across all sports – to pursue the dream of a college education.
“The real payoff is seeing a young man or woman receive their diploma at graduation, knowing that without athletics, it probably wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Warner Pacific will honor Valentine at a special reception on Saturday, Feb. 12 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at its Mt. Tabor campus. The public is invited to this free event. Interested guests can contact the Department of Athletics at 503.517.1261 for more information. The college has also created a blog for guests to leave comments of appreciation for coach Valentine at thankscoachvalentine.wordpress.com.
The search for a new men’s basketball coach will begin later in spring semester, toward the end of the current basketball season.