Friday, March 29, 2024


Unplanned Coaching Career Led to Hall of Fame

Kenn Domerese never planned to coach as a career. He was in Campbellsville University in Kentucky when he was summoned…

By Richard , in Sports , at June 5, 2019

Kenn Domerese never planned to coach as a career. He was in Campbellsville University in Kentucky when he was summoned by President W.R. Davenport. Domerese added how his coach quit just a couple of weeks before the season began. The president asked Kenn to join as a coach as he could not find a replacement with that short a time period. Kenn exclaimed how tough this job was for him. This is how his career began and he went on to create a name for himself in the Michigan high school track and field. It finally led to him gaining a place in Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame.

Domerese was honored on Dec. 1 by the organization which had inducted great track and field coaches of the Beechar and Holly region. Domerese also added how cool the people were. They guided regarding the workouts that needed to be done and how they had to be done. Kenn’s career has been an exciting one. He was the cross country coach in 1974 for the Ainsworth High School as well as the track and field coach in 1975. He continued to work for Carman and Ainsworth when both the high schools merged and formed Carman-Ainsworth in 1986.

Kenn has won the championship of class B at Ainsworth in 1982. It only had three athletes in the state meet. Starting with that championship in the year 1982, the teams led by Domerese finished in the top 10 about 14 times in over 37 seasons in a state meet. His teams from high school also won the state championship in the year 2005, 1993 and 2008.

Domerese also remembers how his team lost by 1 point alone in 2004. He said that losing a match like this is what haunts the coaches the most. He also said it felt bad as they were so close to the victory. He would be sick for a week after the game. Lenn studied from Beecher High School and he set school records in cross country as well as two-mile run. Then he came back to Flint in the search of a teaching job. When the 1972-73 school year began, his chances of landing a job did not look promising. However, he did get a job for elementary physical education in the Carman-Ainsworth district. He got this job as the previous teacher quit right before 3 days.

Just a couple of weeks before he was hired as a cross country coach at Ainsworth, he was turned down when he applied for a position of track and field coach for a junior high school. He said that he was surprised to have gotten rejected as he was sure he would make a good coach.

According to his estimate, during his career, he has had 150 all-staters. There have also been some notable people like NFL offensive tackle Jon Runyan and former USC sprinter Ahmad Rashad. He explained the struggle according to which kids would run anything that is less than 400 meters. Lenn retired from the position of a teacher in the year 2005 but continues to be the coach at Carman-Ainsworth.