Bowling Green School is proud to announce the hiring of coach Charlie Domino as its new varsity and junior varsity girls coach.

A student in the first graduating class of Archbishop Rummel High School in 1966, and a graduate of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., coach Domino is the founder of the highly successful and nationally recognized New Orleans Dominoes Amateur Athletic Union program.

Coach Domino began his coaching career at Ridgewood Prep in Metairie where he worked with football and baseball. The school did not have a basketball program at the time. A friend asked if he would assist him with the girls’ basketball team at Archbishop Chapelle High School in Metairie.

“I had never worked with girls basketball at the time,” said coach Domino. “We ended up winning the city championship three years in a row. I fell in love with the way the girls’ game is played. There are more fundamentals and it’s played below the rim and that just really appealed to me.”

In 1972, coach Domino convinced the headmaster at Chapelle High School to begin a basketball program there where he served as head coach for several seasons.

In 1974 coach Domino began the New Orleans Dominoes, an AAU Junior Olympic program dedicated to girls ages 10-17. Kim Mulkey began playing for coach Domino in 1977 and the program won its first national championship in 1978 when the senior team and junior team both captured national titles on the same day in Tullahoma, Tenn.

Over the years Coach Domino has compiled a record of 1011-326 (75.6 winning percentage) as an AAU coach and was recently nominated to be a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall Of Fame in Knox-ville, Tenn.

“I’ve had offers from college and high school programs over the years,” said Coach Domino. “The timing to take the Bowling Green job was right. I have known Ms. Young since her days at Franklinton High School and we talked when I came to watch Bowling Green play last season. I will enjoy working for her.

“Coach Pat King has the program in excellent shape and that was another thing that made this job attractive to me. I really appreciate what he’s done in his career at Bowling Green. I’ve had numerous girls from Bowling Green and the Franklinton area in the Dominoes program. I know a lot of people there, which made for a more comfortable situation. The parents and supporters is something else I really like about the BGS program.”

“The first thing I plan on doing is meeting all of the kids this week,” said Coach Domino. “I plan to work with them and see what each player does best. Then I’ll fit my game plan around that. I’m not a coach that tries to plug a square peg into a round hole. We will do what we do best.”

“I want to strengthen them fundamentally during the summer so we can move forward with other things in the fall. This summer I plan on taking the team to a Shootout on the Gulf Coast where we can play some different teams. It’s not fun to play the same teams over and over.”

Coach Domino has been awarded Coach of the Decade for Women’s AAU Basketball (1980-1990), and Outstanding Person for Girls’ Basketball in the decade while the program has captured 14 national championships.