Coach Rick
Richard D. Gause · 1961 – 2025
Coach Rick at G and G Steakout II, the restaurant he ran in RochesterThere is a version of this website where his name appears in a caption and nowhere else. That version would be a lie. Keys to the Journey is not something Coach Rick supported from the sideline. He built it, alongside his brother, over years, in gymnasiums and on fields and in rooms full of parents who needed somebody to explain what a core course was.
He died on September 2, 2025, at sixty four. This page is here because the work outlived him and it should say who did it.
Coach Rick with Nathan Carter at a national combine, years before the FalconsWhat he actually did
Head football coach at Bishop Kearney High School in Rochester, the same program Nathan Carter came out of on the way to UConn, Michigan State, and the Atlanta Falcons.
Co-founder of the Rochester Warriors semi-professional football team in 1993, more than thirty years ago now, back when starting a football team in that city meant finding the field, the pads, and the money yourself.
Part of Beyond Athletics and Next Level and Beyond from the beginning. Every NLB shirt in a photograph on this site traces back to a program he helped run.
He backed Rochester Pop Warner, the AAU Franchise Ballers, and 40&1 Baseball. He carried an associate's degree in sports management from Monroe Community College, which he earned because he wanted to be good at this, not because anyone asked him for a credential.
A whole life, not just a sideline
He was born in Miami and made Rochester his city. He ran G&G Steakout II. He worked at Discovery Charter School, and before that at Kodak, Danka, First Funding, The Money Place, and the Southerland Group. He served as a district elder in his church. He ran bingo nights and quietly underwrote scholarships.
He leaves his wife Vielka; his children Rachel, Brandin, Quentin, and Joseph; his grandchildren Henry, Myles, and Isaiah; and his brothers and sisters, one of whom built this platform and is writing this.
Clipboard under his arm
The youngest on the 7 on 7 roster
Out in the community, where most of the work happened
At Uprep Charter School in Rochester
The send off apron the staff at Discovery Charter School signed for himAn apron covered in handwriting
When he left Discovery Charter School the staff signed an apron rather than a card, and every inch of it got filled. Stay golden. You will be missed. Rise and shine. That is what forty years of showing up for other people's children buys you, and it is worth more than a plaque.
Rochester Black Men Achieve Awards
Beyond Athletics, Rochester, New York
At a Keys to the Journey event
BrothersTwo brothers, one argument, thirty years
The argument was always the same one. That a kid who can play is still a kid who has to graduate. That a parent who does not understand eligibility is not a bad parent, they are an uninformed one, and that is fixable in an afternoon. That the people selling recruiting exposure to families for thousands of dollars were selling something that ought to be free.
Everything on this platform is that argument, written down and made to work at scale. The free profile is that argument. The guardian consent gate is that argument. The refusal to publish measurables about a child before the child says so is that argument. He does not get a footnote for it.
One family, Rochester
He was born in Miami and made Rochester his city. Six brothers and sisters, and the argument about what a young man owes himself started at that table long before any of it had a name or a website.
The family portrait, Rochester, New York
Off the clock, which he did not do often enough
Dates, family names, and career details on this page are taken from his published obituary,
Metropolitan Funeral Chapels, Rochester, New York.
If anything here is wrong, write to
keystothejourney@gmail.com
and it will be corrected the same day.