Griswold boys basketball coach Gary Kinel is approaching basketball immortality in this state anyway.
Kinel is on the verge of becoming one of the rare few to have 500 coaching victories in the sport of high school boys basketball.
Kinel will become the 9th coach to reach the historic mark, two of them on the list also hail from Eastern Connecticut. Former Tourtellotte head coach Jim Canty just crossed the line with 501 while Putnam's Tony Falzarano is at 533 and still counting.
Kinel is a unique individual, however, as he has tried to stay out of the limelight. I spoke with him following his team's loss to Montville Friday night and he said his only concern was to see his team get to eight wins and make both the ECC and state tournaments. 500, he said, is just an arbitrary number cooked up from somewhere that held very little meaning to him- personally.
Earlier in the season when I spoke with Griswold player Kyle Genereux, he admitted the team definitely wanted to get their coach his 500th career victory. In fact, they were disappointed because they hadn't done so last year.
After Griswold's win over Plainfield Saturday, Kinel needs just one more victory. It probably won't come vs. Windham on Tuesday but could very easily happen against Bacon Academy this Friday.